Dak Prescott explains his thinking on why he shouldn’t have to take a “team-friendly” deal

It’s been a bit since we’ve heard much about the upcoming new deal for Dak Prescott. We know it’s coming, we just don’t know when or for how much. Since we’re in a short summer holiday in the NFL offseason schedule, things seem to have slowed down on the contract front. But Prescott still has some opinions on the subject and is making them known.

A while back, Stephen Jones made an effort to sell Prescott, and other Cowboys stars, on the idea of “team-friendly” deals that don’t max out their contracts.

”If we can talk them into not maxing out, doing well, but not maxed, that allows us to have other good football players around them,” Jones said during the team’s annual golf outing for sponsors at Cowboys Golf Club. “And we all know what happens, you look at the TV booths and look at what these players do off the field. If we can put Super Bowl rings on these guys, they’ll be legends around this area for many, many, many years to come.

”What they may give up a little bit in their contract, they should be able to invest in being a Cowboy and making our teams better.”

As we noted at the time, it’s a nice sentiment but not one NFL players are likely going to take to heart. Especially a player who has been grossly underpaid so far in his NFL career. Prescott realizes that Amari Cooper and Ezekiel Elliott are also going to want top dollar, but he’s not ready to concede that anybody has to do a “team-friendly” deal.

“For somebody to say you can only take so much because of the salary cap or you can only do this or that, I don’t know how fair that is to say,” Prescott said. “Because with gambling, with everything going into this league, everything is going to continue to keep going up.

“It’s important for all these guys to get every bit of their worth. I want to see Zeke the highest paid. I want to see Amari the highest paid. I want to see myself up there. And I don’t think any of that is too far-fetched. Because at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, a year or two later, you’re not going to be the highest paid. That’s just the way the game goes.”

Prescott is making the point that the salary cap keeps increasing, and that there is room for the Cowboys players to get top dollar. He notes, rightly so, that the top-paid player one year is usually eclipsed by someone else the next.

And his point about the salary cap is valid. Over the last six years, the salary cap has increased on average $10 million a year.

“I don’t think it’s fair to sit there and say, ‘This guy can’t get that because he needs the rest of the team,’” Prescott said. “The rest of the team can all get theirs with the way the league is trending.”

It’s hard to blame Prescott for seeking the biggest contract he can get, especially given how little he’s been paid so far. He has routinely been designated the biggest bargain in the league based on his salary cap number (only $2.1 million this year, and that’s the highest it’s ever been and more than he made in his first three years combined) vs. his production on the field (wins, NFC East titles, Pro Bowls, stats, etc.).

At this point, there hasn’t been much movement on a contract beyond the exchange of numbers reported earlier this offseason.

“I mean, steps have to be made,” Prescott said Monday while working with AT&T/DirecTV, with whom he partners on products including NFL Sunday Ticket. “They’re simple steps. For the most part, obviously you want to get closure and obviously you want to get it done, but the Cowboys probably feel the same way that I do: Nobody wants to take anything that’s not fair to the other.”

We wait, but this deal will go down sometime before the season. The only thing we’re really waiting on are the numbers.