Dak Prescott is coming off a career season, which earned him a top-five finish in MVP voting. For the third consecutive season, the quarterback helped the Cowboys win 12 games.
But his future is complicated.
While the Cowboys have gone 73-41 in the regular season in his eight seasons, they are only 2-5 in the postseason, and Prescott has a $59.5 million cap hit next season in the last year of his contract.
“Dak has done nothing to change my mind about any promise for the future,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Tuesday at the Senior Bowl, via Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I think I’ve said in the deal that we will go as far as Dak takes us in the playoffs. Remember that. We will go as far as Dak takes us, and that is how far we went. So my point is, that doesn’t change a thing. We’ll go as far as Dak takes us.”
Projected to be roughly $19 million over the 2024 salary cap, the Cowboys will need to lower Prescott’s cap hit. A contract extension would be the easiest way to do that, but it likely will take an average salary in the $50 million range for the sides to get there and another multi-year commitment.
Do they or don’t they?
A year ago, Jones, and his son, Stephen, were adamant about the Cowboys’ plans to sign Prescott to a long-term contract extension. On Tuesday, the Cowboys stayed away from discussion about an extension for their quarterback.
Reporters pressed Jerry Jones about his hesitation about Prescott compared to this time a year ago, and Jones’ response was a word salad.
“I’m unequivocal about it right now,” Jones said. “We’ve got a lot of contract work to do. I’m unequivocal about all of the contracts. I can be unequivocal about all the contracts. But we’re going to have to adjust all contracts to get as many of the very players that you could ask me about singly under contract. The facts are that it’s obvious who your top players are. It’s obvious who the players we want back would be. That’s obvious. It very obvious here in my mind. And so anything I’ve said, like last year, I said we see a picture of him going forward for many years, that’s alive and well. Yes, we sure do, but we’ve got a lot of contracts to address.”
Prescott has a no-trade clause and a no-franchise tag clause for 2025, so if the Cowboys don’t get an extension done before next March, he will enter free agency.
The Cowboys, though, also have to get receiver CeeDee Lamb and edge rusher Micah Parsons signed to long-term deals.
A Prescott extension would make that easier, and Jones was asked whether he expected that to get done.
“I don’t even want to answer the question,” Jones said. “I would let everybody say you can just assume that. You can just assume that right there. What I’m really saying is I’m not going to be discussing any part of it, because it looks like that’s an issue, when it’s not. It’s the entire thing and the balancing of the entire thing.
“You’ve got to look at everything. We’ve got to see how much we can get onto the cap. So it’s a holistic approach, more so than any year that we’ve had.”
Prescott had a career year with 4,516 passing yards, a league-best 36 touchdowns and nine interceptions for a career-best 105.9 passer rating.