History tells us Dak Prescott and the Cowboys will terminate the contract at the last minute

The Dallas Cowboys are set to enter the season in active contract negotiations with their quarterback. That’s practically unheard of these days. The best quarterbacks — and even the most average quarterbacks — tend to get their money without much fuss. Trevor Lawrence just got $55 million a year, folks. Prescott is the last major quarterback without a long-term deal this summer, and there’s a real mystery as to why.

If the Cowboys were able to replace Prescott on the cheap, okay, maybe we could start to attribute logic to Jerry Jones’ actions. But they’re not. Dallas won’t be bad enough to get a high draft pick, and Trey Lance has done almost nothing since joining the Cowboys’ depth chart. If the Cowboys let Prescott hit free agency, several teams will come in with competitive offers. There’s no benefit to waiting. We’ve already seen the QB market explode this summer while the Cowboys have been sitting on their hands.

Jones said there’s no pressure to get the deal done. It sounds like he doesn’t want Prescott to become the richest player in NFL history. That’s fair. Prescott signing what will inevitably be the biggest contract in history seems a little silly at first glance. But that’s the world we live in. The quarterback market is huge. There’s no more valuable asset in the NFL than a competent quarterback. Prescott, despite his many, many flaws, is more than competent. He finished second in MVP voting last season, and for good reason.

That is, in part, why we should expect this deal to cross the finish line sooner rather than later. Another reason? Well, history is on Prescott’s side.

What was all this, one long Jerry Jones con? A ruse to grab media attention and keep the tabloids focused on Dallas. At first glance, it seems unlikely, but this is Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys. No team owner has more blatantly blurred the line between sports and business. The Cowboys are trying to reach the top—there’s no doubt about that—but Jones would like to get there in a big way, so to speak. He’ll make the most of it.

Above Landry’s HatJerry Trotta made a compelling argument consistent with the above claim — Jones is simply waiting for the right moment to swing the headlines in Dallas’ favor.

“If there’s one thing Jones loves, it’s controlling the narrative,” Trotta writes. “He admitted he’s ‘doing his job’ as long as people are talking about the Cowboys. Well, what could get people talking more than signing Prescott to a record-breaking extension on the eve of the NFL season? … The news that Mike Zimmer was taking over as defensive coordinator in Dallas came just before the start of NFL Honors. Similarly, the Cowboys signed Ezekiel Elliott just after the draft in April. That move undoubtedly overshadowed the biggest storylines of the draft. The list goes on.”

In short, there’s every reason to believe Dallas will announce a Prescott deal in the next few days. Maybe “hours before kickoff” is a bit of an exaggeration, as Trotta suggests, but the Cowboys could leave it until the last minute, just for fun. There’s simply no way the Cowboys are going to let Prescott walk away as a free agent. That would be a glaring mistake rooted in pride alone. We can’t let Jones make a glaring mistake rooted in pride, but it’s clear that Dallas needs to pay Prescott. There’s no way around that without risking continued mediocrity.

With that in mind, people should buckle up for a crazy week. We may soon be talking about the new richest man in NFL history.