'Blame Yourself!' Dak Prescott Has Cowboys 'Bent Over a Barrel' In Contract Talks

Dak Prescott is due an extension and PFT's Mike Florio states that it is the Cowboys' own doing that has them in the unfortunate situation where they have to extend their quarterback again so quickly.

"Blame yourself,'' Dallas Cowboys, and not Dak Prescott, for the current contract predicament the Joneses are in. That's the message being thrown around this week, with Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio the latest to dissect Prescott's upcoming extension.

To some, Jerry Jones "lost'' the negotiations with Prescott during the last contract talks as Dak signed a four-year, $160 million contract in March 2021. With a $40 million APY for Prescott currently hanging over their heads, Dallas is in a precarious position ... especially with the contracts of CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons, and Trevon Diggs all due soon. 

And so the plan is to re-do Dak, paying him even more money, to both retain his services and spread out money to help elsewhere.

But for Florio, all the blame falls back on Dallas, not Dak.

"Don't blame it on Dak, blame it on yourself for screwing around and putting Dak in a position of extreme power that he was able to leverage the best quarterback deal out there because it combines high APY with short duration," Florio said on NFL NBC.

"He's already got them over a barrel again after two years of this four-year contract. The cap number is high, and he has mechanisms built into this contract because if they don't get it done, he becomes a free agent, and they can't tag him. It's been perfectly and expertly negotiated to set him up for another huge payday or a trip to the open market, and the sooner they do it, the better off they'll be.

"But don't blame it on him; blame it on yourself. It's your fault for mishandling the situation."

Florio is right; had the Cowboys signed Dak earlier than they did (a franchise tag was also used instead of a long-term deal, Jerry and the Dallas front office would not have forked out what was, at the time, huge money for a quarterback that some felt they didn't fully believe in.

What he's missing, though: They tried. A year before they did the $40 million APY deal, Jerry announced it was "imminent'' that a deal would be done ... with CowboysSI.com breaking the story at the time that that contract would've been worth $31 million APY.

We agree with (and have preached for years) Florio's point about being proactive, which the Cowboys generally are not in these matters.

Having four stars all due for contracts at roughly the same time isn't daunting for Stephen Jones. Still, it is clear that some serious salary cap massaging needs to occur. Prescott has stated he has full trust that something will be worked out in the near future, and it is clear he's the leader of this locker room, but the longer the Cowboys wait, the pricier it becomes.

Has Dak forced Dallas "over a barrel''? With all due respect to Florio's expertise on the subject, we can't really know that until two things occur.

One: What is the new contract going to be? How can we criticize it preemptively?

And two: What if, no matter the size of the contract, Dak's Cowboys win a Super Bowl? Not even Jerry Jones' harshest critics will have much to whine about then.

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