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The Dallas Cowboys have some work to do. Dak Prescott, Amari Cooper, Byron Jones, Robert Quinn... it’s a long list of free agents. Earlier today we learned from Stephen Jones that the Cowboys and Dak Prescott’s agents hadn’t really talked since deal negotiations fell apart last September.
It turns out that the Cowboys have spoken with Amari Cooper’s agent as recently as the Super Bowl.
Stephen Jones says he talked to #Cowboys WR Amari Cooper and his agent at the Super Bowl. When I asked him to characterize conversation “very upbeat” but “we haven’t really gone into any details with any players since the end of the season. Really want to see where the CBA is.”
— Jane Slater (@SlaterNFL) February 24, 2020
This isn’t a whole lot more than what they’ve done with Prescott and his team. It doesn’t sound like anything around contract details were discussed, but at least they spoke.
The CBA seems to be the hold up here. Until they either know the contours of a new CBA, or they know they will be operating under the final year of the previous CBA, it doesn’t look like there will be much movement.
“We haven’t gone into any details with players since the end of the season. We are really wanting to see where the CBA is,” Jones said. “The way I look at these contracts, the two we are talking about [Prescott and Cooper], when things get momentum they can happen in 24 hours. It’s just a matter of can you get some traction and [be] headed in the right direction.”
Undoubtedly the Cowboys have a real good idea of what both Prescott and Cooper will be asking for. They’ve already been in negotiations with them the previous offseason so things can move pretty quickly once the CBA issues has been ironed out.
As for using the franchise tag on Prescott:
Jones would not get into whether the Cowboys would use the nonexclusive franchise tag, which would cost $27 million but allow Prescott to shop the market, or exclusive tag, which would cost $33 million and prevent teams from signing him.
“I just don’t think we’ve had our hands around what the next steps are,” Jones said. “Obviously we didn’t end up getting it done because they were pretty entrenched with their thoughts and we were pretty entrenched with our thoughts. I think really that’s the facts of the world we work. Certainly we’ve done a lot of thinking about it and looking at it and we’ll see where it ends up.”
So, basically, don’t expect any movement on the big contracts until the CBA issue is cleared up.