Why do Cowboys always run into contract trouble?
Mike Florio and Chris Simms analyze the difficulties Jerry Jones and the Cowboys have with signing star players to long-term deals, discussing why the owner has not taken a proactive approach to retaining talent.
Video Transcript
What's amazing though is that people don't seem to recognize how the Cowboys keep stepping in crap.
And I don't know, I don't watch the other shows, I don't consume the other content- Some people do but I don't see clips making the rounds that they do this over and over again, and they never learn from it.
And when are their fans gonna demand something more?
And I don't know, again, if it comes from stubbornness or cheapness, maybe it's a combination of both, but they think that they can negotiate directly with the players.
That doesn't work.
They can wait and delay and drag their feet.
That doesn't work.
You either end up paying way too much for Dak Prescott, and 60 million a year I mean, look, I love Dak Prescott, he shouldn't be the highest paid player in football.
No, that's right.
He shouldn't be the highest paid player in football- That's right because he's not the best player in football.
Exactly right.
The best player in football should be the highest paid player in football.
That, that, that's right.
But he's the highest paid player in football because the Cowboys screwed around, they waited too long, and then they realized, "Holy crap, he's really gonna do this.
One more year under the franchise tag, and his tag number for this year is gonna go up by 44%.
We're not gonna be able to keep him, we'd better give him what he wants."
And then that thing was structured with all sorts of triggers and fuses in it where, oh, God, now we got, we gotta do it again.
We gotta make him the highest paid player again.
We go from 40 million a year to 60 million a year.
That's on them.
So at one extreme, they grossly overpay the quarterback.
At the other extreme, they think they're gonna hatch this way to keep Michael Parsons through five years of his rookie contract, and it pisses him off, and he uses things that Jerry would use if he was in that position.
That's the thing, for the first time ever, Jerry Jones has come up against two guys who are willing to be as aggressive and shrewd and conniving- Yeah and manipulative, all in a good business way.
I don't mean that in a bad way, but, you know, you roll up your sleeves and you're gonna do business.
Friendship later, business now.
Dak did one type of business, Mikey did another type of business, and Jerry lost both of those.
When's he gonna learn?
Yeah.
Yeah, when's he gonna learn?
Right.
And, and, and again, you know, we've discussed this, but when you let contracts go to that extent, like you talk about, and you gotta overpay, and it's, it's, "Oh, wait, we overpaid this guy by three or four or $5 million, and this guy..." You know, we've discussed this, this is It affects your team.
That, that's where people forget about that.
You go, "No, that was, that's an extra four or five guys on the team."
That would've been quality backups that you've lost.
And then you wonder why the Eagles, when somebody gets hurt, we go, "Oh, damn, that player's good behind him."
Well, they didn't drag their feet, they didn't waste their money, they didn't overpay guys, so they were allowed to then overpay or pay some backups that were really quality to come and be a part of it.
And then there's less issues with your football team.
And in Dallas, there hasn't been that.
One guy gets hurt in Dallas, a lot of the times you go, "Oh, they're screwed there.
Oh, DeMarion Overshown's ma- Oh, they, they're screwed.
They have nobody other l- no other linebackers."
They've had too much of that go on.
And here, just for some context into like what you're saying to make the point valid, the Bengals, the two receivers, Chase and Higgins, 68.5 million combined when you average it out.
The Eagles, Brown and Smith, right?
A.J.
Brown, DeVonta Smith, 57 million between the two when you combine the average.
And then there's the Lions at 56.6 between Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams.
As we sit here right now, that the Dallas Cowboys just base level, if we just go George Pickens barely one's up JSN, they are going to be the highest duo of receivers by about 10 million, nine and change, 10 million.
Again, that's not where you wanna be.
That, that, that, that, tells you a little bit right there.
"Wait, the market was here.
Oh, we're about to get fleeced by the player again.
Now we're gonna re- we're gonna be the resetter of the market here all of a sudden by a long shot."
And that's not good on the team.
That's not what you always wanna say there.
And that's, I think, you know, speaks for itself in a little, in some ways.
It get back I- it gives back to what I said.
Yeah.
When you do the trade for George Pickens, you gotta have a plan.
Mm-hmm.
And you have a plan based upon how your initial plan goes.
And if it exceeds your wildest expectations and you get this phenomenal player that gets you to say the words poetic, opera, and ballet in the same breath, congratulations.
Now you got a problem.
What are you gonna do?
What are you, what are you gonna do if George Pickens ends up being better than the guy you've already paid 35 million per year to?
I mean, that's basically what we're saying.
Mm-hmm.
They rolled the dice, they, they bought low.
And see, this is the problem.
It's not buy low, sell high in the NFL, it's buy low, buy high.
And if you get a guy at a reasonable level of compensation, third round pick and whatever he made last year, three million, something like that, that's great.
Congratulations.
Now you gotta pay.
You don't, you don't get a bunch of money, you have to pay a bunch of money when you win the lottery as an NFL team.
You have the privilege of paying someone a lot of money 'cause that means you've got a great player, and that's what Jerry has tried to push back against.
And this is one of the reasons why they haven't played in the game to get to the Super Bowl for three decades.
They resist- Yeah to a fault.
Yeah.
Repeatedly.
Yes.
The other side of this, that when you have a player that you acquired, round four quarterback, paid him peanuts for four years, we resist doing what we should be doing to have a successful functional football team.
Yes.
We have a great pass rusher that we got with a top 12 pick.
He's great.
He's generational.
We resist paying the guy what we should pay him after three seasons.
That was a problem.
Yeah.
Michael Parsons is one of the guys who absolutely should've been paid after three seasons.
You and I said he should not set foot on a- the field- Yes in his fourth NFL season- It was a no-brainer until he gets a new contract Nobody in football would've said, "Oh, he's one of the two or three best defensive players in football," right off the bat.
You knew that.
You knew that's what he was.
Just get it done.
We Be in front of it.
Yes.
And then to your point, too, and I think about you with this, too, especially with the younger generation of this age group, w- with what you talk about, the Jones family, Jerry trying to, you know, "It's America's Team, and you're gonna have all these opportunities.
You'll be on TV."
I'm trying to do my impression of you doing the impression of him, right?
But- That's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
But- You need to do the impression- of me doing the impression of him as Phil would do it.
Right.
Then, then you've nailed it.
Right.
Okay, I'll get there later in the show.
But- All right I, I think that falls on deaf ear, deaf ears with this generation, to the point you always make.
These k- George Pickens wasn't alive the last time they went to the NFC championship game.
He doesn't give a crap.
He doesn't think it's all Dallas is all that.
Yeah, he's heard, "Oh, Dallas" is like But, like, that, that's where we know, we see these new kids.
I mean, it, it, it's a new generation.
They don't know how special Dallas used to be, and some of those old tricks that they might have been able to use on Michael Irvin and Tony Romo, and take a little less 'cause you're the Cowboys, and we'll love you, and we'll take care of you.
Like, nobody gives a crap about that, that shit anymore.
Like, see you later.
Out of here.
And, and it doesn't have the same It doesn't hold the same what?
Weight, or what I want to say.
It's weight worth in gold?
Yeah.
Is that what they say there?
It doesn't hold it anymore, and that's where I think they need to recalibrate as well.
All right.
I don't know what the hell I'm saying.
The, the saying is worth your weight in gold- Yeah and it has no application whatsoever- to the point you're trying to make- That's- but that's okay.
Yes.
You tried.
Yes.
I tried.
And this is the kind of thing where Cowboys fans are gonna be mad that we're talking like this, because there's this knee-jerk reaction to circle the wagons and fight back at any cr- how dare you criticize our team?
Why do you hate our team?
That Why do you I get, "Why do you hate my team?
Why do you hate my team?
Why do you hate this team?"
Hey, he, no, he hates my team.
He doesn't hate your team.
He hates my team.
He can't hate your team, 'cause they already traveled to my team, and he hates my team.
Look, these are just free suggestions.
Well, we, we get paid.
But these are unsolicited suggestions for how to make your team better.
Because we follow the whole league.
We see what works, we see what doesn't, and it's kind of fun to talk about the stuff that doesn't work because we feel like we've got some standing to say, based upon the years we've both been doing this and our brains combined together to become some marginally functioning unit, h- why do they keep screwing this up?
Yeah.
And if I was a Cowboys fan, I would be livid about this.
What the hell are we doing?
Every damn time we get a great player, instead of reading about the player becoming the new highest paid, until they have no other choice whatsoever, and they have to make a guy who shouldn't be the highest paid the highest paid, like they did with Dak, w- w- every time, they gotta, they, they drag their feet.
And I don't know, is it part of the, we want people to be talking about the Cowboys- Maybe for all these weeks and months until we finally pay?
I, I think they can use that to justify it, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, and I, I have, I have said many times, Jerry Jones has been great for the National Football League.
Yes.
He has helped take something- No denying it that was here, and he is, he has, he has challenged That's the irony of this.
He has challenged his, his colleagues to think like business people.
He has challenged people to squeeze every last dollar of revenue that they can out of all of the streams that are available to this property that is the NFL.
And at the same time, he's too damn cheap to take care of his own players, and it's blowing up on him, and it's gonna happen again.
I don't know how it's gonna end with George Pickens, but I got a feeling it's not gonna end well.
Yeah, it doesn't seem well.
Whatever the details- Yeah it's not gonna end well.
Yeah, and it's just a different dynamic in business.
I think that's where i- i- you know, Jerry can win that way, probably in all other factions of his business life.
But this, with football players, the human aspect, what needs to be spent on the salary cap, team building, right?
Like, with all the things we discussed, that, that's where, you know, trying to be the tough businessman and, and squeeze every last penny out, like you did for most of your life, it maybe doesn't always apply here in, in this one.
And that's where, you know, it feels like they've, dropped the ball a little bit.
And Puka's gonna be getting his at some point.
We'll see what kind of new money average he gets.
We'll see if it's 42.25 million, if it's just a click above.
We'll delve into the details of the eventual contract to see how much of it's real, how much of it is just calculated to get him there.
We saw that stuff with Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill four years ago, where both of their deals had backend, big inflated backend years that were aimed at driving up, driving up the APY.
And the thing about the JSN deal, the backend years, the non-guaranteed years, they're less than the APY.
Yeah, yeah.
They're, they're not there- He can see every penny to create a phony- Yeah APY.
Yeah.
And, and the reality is he won't see every penny because, and I was talking to somebody about this yesterday, like, when you have a six-year deal, there's a less than 5% chance that the six years are ever gonna be honored.
It's either gonna be replaced or it's gonna be torn up.
Yeah.
It's not gonna be, we're gonna ride this thing all the way out to the end.
And the reality is, if he keeps doing what he's doing, they're gonna give him an adjustment year.
Exactly.
Because three years from now- Mm-hmm 42.15 million is gonna put him six, seven, eight, nine on the list of receivers.
And I know that's hard to comprehend now, but look at where the cap has gone in five years, from 182 to 301.
Unless the NFL does what I fear they may do, and dramatically restrict the growth of the cap and shift from a 50/50 to a set number, that's the only way that these numbers are not gonna continue to explode.
So we'll see how that goes
