No team in the NFL gets taken to the cleaners in contract negotiations more than the Dallas Cowboys. The financial benefit to getting out in front of these deals goes without saying, but it would also save players, like Dak Prescott, from a lot of scrutiny.
Granted, most of the Prescott slander stems from the fact he plays for the Cowboys, but his contract is easy pickings for writers and analysts.
Lou Scataglia of NFL Spin Zone recently picked every team's worst contract going into the 2025 season and landed on Prescott for Dallas.
"At $60 million per year, Dak Prescott is the only QB in the NFL who has hit this figure, but he's absolutely not worth it," Scataglia wrote. "The QB contract market works like this, though, as we see QBs resetting the top of the market with regularity."
The Cowboys overpaid to keep Dak Prescott as their QB1
Scataglia's analysis might seem harsh, but he fully recognizes that Prescott is a capable quarterback worthy of a big contract.
"Prescott is an above-average QB and does get quite a bit of hate thrown his way. A lot of that hate is simply because he plays for the Dallas Cowboys, as he would be a better QB option than what many other teams currently have. The veteran QB has always said the right thing and is clearly a top-tier teammate, but the pricetag just isn't a fair assessment of the play the Cowboys get."
Prescott's $60 million annual average value is $5 million more than the next quarterbacks. Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Jordan Love and Trevor Lawrence all make $55 million per year.
Is Prescott more valuable than Burrow and Allen? Definitely not, but it's not his fault Jerry Jones delayed his extension by a full year. Jones entered the 2023 season with minimal leverage to begin with and Prescott made him pay to the tune of finishing second in MVP voting after throwing for more than 4,500 yards and 36 touchdowns to nine touchdowns.
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Now, is it possible Prescott himself didn't want to sign ahead of time? No doubt. His price was only going to keep going up the longer he waited. That same theory was floated with CeeDee Lamb during his contract holdout last offseason.
Putting the process aside for a moment, the Cowboys would have been raked over the coals no matter what they did with Prescott.
Either they pay one of the game's more consistent QBs and get dragged for how much they paid him, or they blow up a core that includes elite talents like Lamb and Micah Parsons and get eviscerated for not being serious about winning a Super Bowl.
It is hard to deny that Prescott is "overpaid" but Lamar Jackson and others will surpass his $60 million benchmark soon enough. He had Dallas hanging over a barrel and used the full extent of it.
