Think about how hard it is to get a group of people, any group of people, to agree on something. You can walk into a random room and say that pizza is awesome and somebody is going to counter that. If you try again and say that ice cream is amazing then you are likely going to be met with resistance there as well. Total agreement is a rare thing.
Understanding this, think about how insane/amazing it is that (for the most part, due to the same logic we just outlined) Dallas Cowboys fans all agree that a Micah Parsons extension should have been taken care of by now. Parsons, who was first eligible for an extension last offseason, seems to remain puzzled by this himself.
Whether you are happy that the Cowboys signed Dak Prescott and/or CeeDee Lamb to extensions last year (again, a group will never agree), you can at the very least admit that waiting in both cases led to the price rising for each player. The NFL has an overwhelming amount of data and information to support that notion; getting to big-time contracts for players who play expensive positions is generally the best strategy. When you are dealing with someone who has as few (if any) questions about them as Parsons, that argument rings even more true.
Micah Parsons believes the Cowboys are costing themselves more
It is difficult to poke holes in Micah Parsons as a candidate to be a cornerstone for your NFL franchise. His on-field production speaks for itself and he has been a strong ambassador for the team off of it from just about Day 1. If you happened to believe that he needed to show a higher level of leadership, him reporting for mandatory minicamp and not making the contract negotiation situation more difficult - T.J. Watt and Trey Hendrickson both sat out their respective camps - should answer that question. He also showed up all of last year to that point.
The Watt and Hendrickson situations really matter here though because they play the same position as Parsons and clearly want new contracts. In a world of supply and demand it is possible that if and when they get them, and if they do so before the Cowboys sign Parsons, that the price will be driven up due to what would be the new market rate.
It seems Parsons agrees with that idea according to DLLS by way of Clarence Hill Jr.
We can quibble about whether or not Parsons should be paid more than Watt, but we all know that this principle is not what ultimately drives the numbers on contracts. History tells us that, for the most part, the next guy up gets a little bit more than the most recent guy got. Look at Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb and whoever else you want even across the league as an example.
It should be reiterated that the Cowboys had a chance to get Parsons done as early as last offseason and that if they had they could have, from a salary cap standpoint, taken advantage of an extra year of his rookie contract as far as allocation of funds were concerned. Had they taken care of him last year they likely would have beaten not only Watt and Hendrickson to the punch, but also Myles Garrett who got a four-year deal with the Cleveland Browns at the beginning of this offseason. It averages $40M per year.
Last year with regards to the Prescott deal, a player who I personally believe is worth it but understand that there is debate on that idea, there should have been a line in the sand from a time standpoint. The Cowboys should have determined that once they reached a certain point that they were committed to not giving him the deal. I would have disagreed with this, but the idea would have at least been born out of logic. The reason for this suggested practice was that you have to make those kinds of decisions sometimes in the name of building the best roster possible. We know that the Cowboys ultimately signed Prescott to an extension, but they literally did so on the day that last season began. It isn’t hyperbolic to say that the way in which they signed him - a reminder that he became the highest-paid player in NFL history - was done in literally the most inefficient manner possible.
That’s what this all boils down to. Waiting, dragging your feet or however else you want to put it only serves to make what you are trying to do more difficult. We have all procrastinated something in our lives, but if you kept getting failing grades because you were not studying for your tests, didn’t you make an adjustment? At some point did you not learn from this pattern of behavior?
It is hard to believe that the Cowboys cannot learn from their mistakes or that they aren’t aware of this idea. In fact, we know that this is not the case.
Consider that Stephen Jones said back in March that the team puts “zero credence” into the notion that they wait too long.
“We’ve done the early before, and we’ve waited until the end to do them,” Jones said. “A lot of it is just the negotiation itself. Some of them take longer than others. And we put about zero credibility or credence into people saying you wait too long.”
But wait. I just confidently said that we know the Cowboys know that waiting is unwise. How can we say that if Stephen said that they put zero credence into that notion?
Back in 2021, after the Cowboys finally gave Dak Prescott his first massive extension with the team, Stephen was asked by Pat Doney for his biggest “swing and miss” from a contractual perspective. He said that he wishes the Cowboys would have signed Dak Prescott “the first time around.”
To be clear “the first time around” for Prescott was in 2019. The Cowboys saw the Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles get extensions done with Jared Goff and Carson Wentz, respectively, and chose not to follow suit. The point, Stephen’s point actually, is that by delaying things in 2019 the Cowboys made matters more difficult for themselves in both 2020 and eventually 2021 when they got Dak signed. Their poor future outlook also cost themselves with Dak once more last offseason as mentioned.
We have not quite reached this same point with Parsons , but the Cowboys have already missed the chance to do this as efficiently as possible.