Should the Cowboys pay Dak Prescott? Maybe, but there’s a number they shouldn’t go over

The Dallas Cowboys are in trouble with Dak Prescott. They’re either going to A) pay him an astronomical amount of money to be a really, really good — but probably not elite — NFL quarterback; or B) let him walk, save all that money but wander deep into the quarterback wilderness.

There’s no easy choice here, and a big reason for that is that the NFL quarterback market is broken. The easiest way to tell: In a sensible economy, the best player on the best team would make the most money. So, this should be simple.

The Kansas City Chiefs are the best team in the NFL. They also have the best quarterback in the world in Patrick Mahomes. It seems like a no-brainer that Mahomes should be the highest-paid player in football. And yet, Mahomes ranks 11th in average annual salary at $45 million, after Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and Green Bay Packers QB Jordan Love recently signed mega deals.

This is a problem.

Not for Mahomes, who has no problem with his compensationand certainly not for the Chiefs, but for the rest of the NFL and especially the teams that pay their less talented quarterbacks more money than Mahomes — or are preparing to do so (ahem, Cowboys).

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These teams are deliberately putting themselves at a distinct competitive disadvantage. By paying their veteran QBs more money — and giving them a bigger slice of the salary cap pie — than the best player in the world, they burden themselves with the task of building rosters around their QBs good enough to close the gap between their QB and Mahomes — and doing it for less money.

That’s a bit of an oversimplification of the situation, but it’s largely the bet these teams are making when they overpay their less talented QBs. It’s not a great bet, but it’s still perfectly understandable. Not Paying these quarterbacks and choosing to enter QB purgatory with no guarantee of escape is terrifying. These front offices have a livelihood to protect, so the choice to move on from a quality quarterback in a QB-driven league is an extraordinarily difficult choice to make.

And that brings us back to Dallas, where the QB is in a unique position to convince the Cowboys to pay him an ungodly amount.

Should they do that?

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First, let’s establish that Prescott is a decidedly top-tier QB. You can’t be lucky with what he’s accomplished in 2023 — an All-Pro season and an MVP runner-up — but he also doesn’t exist in the same stratosphere of difference-makers as Mahomes.

Still, he has enormous leverage, coming off the best season of his career, just turned 31, playing in the final year of his contract, and the Cowboys can’t use the franchise tag on him, meaning unless he signs a new deal in the next eight months, he’ll hit free agency. And Prescott knows that if he hits the open market, teams in need of QBs will be falling over themselves to pay him more than $60 million a year. So that’s likely the price for Dallas.

But can the Cowboys afford to let a QB of Prescott’s caliber take charge? That lots of salary space and still remain competitive?

That would be difficult.

I looked back at the cap hits of the quarterbacks from teams that reached the last 10 conference title games. Of those 40 teams, only five quarterbacks had salaries that took up more than 15% of the cap.

Only Mahomes’ Chiefs have won the Super Bowl.

If we were to stop our analysis here, we might conclude that Mahomes is the exception to the rule and that you can’t win a championship while paying your QB — unless he’s Mahomes — more than 15% of the salary cap. That would indicate that the Cowboys probably shouldn’t be paying Prescott and that teams like the Dolphins and Packers made a mistake by paying their QBs.

But let’s take it a step further. Of those 40 teams, only 19 played in a conference championship game with a quarterback commanding more than 10% of the cap (the rookie QB contract is a powerful thing). Five of those 19 were Tom Brady or Mahomes. As for teams that have won a Super Bowl with a quarterback commanding more than 10% of the cap, the list goes like this:

That’s four years in a row, so it might be fair to conclude that teams can get away with 10%. However, since three of those titles have been won by teams led by two of the best to ever do it, Mahomes and Brady, it’s hard to know for sure.

Even with the salary cap rising rapidly (Over The Cap and Spotrac both predict the salary cap, which currently sits at $255.4 million, will surpass $300 million by 2027), Prescott’s $60 million-plus salary will likely eat up a big chunk of that.

Of course, the Cowboys could (and probably would) try to emulate teams like the Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints by adding a few years to the end of Prescott’s contract and pushing much of the money they’re owed from him into the future.

For those unfamiliar with this strategy, the Eagles signed QB Jalen Hurts to a five-year, $255 million extension last year. However, there are seven empty years in the deal that keep his cap hit below 15% through 2027. Now, his projected cap hit for 2029 is over $97 million, but he’ll likely never play at that amount because the Eagles will likely reconfigure his contract and keep pushing money into the future so it’s easier to build a talented roster around him. In the Cowboys’ case, this would allow them to re-sign superstar receiver CeeDee Lamb and superstar pass rusher Micah Parsons, among others, while also paying Prescott.

There are downsides to vacant years: they can yield a lot of dead money in the future and/or force teams to hand out contract extensions to older/average players just to make ends meet.

Playing the game this way comes with a lot of risk. Is Prescott the type of QB worth taking those kinds of risks? So far in his career, despite all of his regular season success, his lack of postseason success makes it tough.

Prescott has struggled to perform at a top-10 level against 2023 playoff teams. And that fits with Prescott’s career. He’s a good QB overall who will win a lot of regular-season games, but he hasn’t performed at that same level against the league’s best players, which is what you typically see in the playoffs.

Remember, Dallas hasn’t been to an NFC Championship Game since 1995, meaning he hasn’t gotten the Cowboys where they want to go, regardless of Prescott’s rookie contract and the four-year, $160 million contract he’s currently under.

So why should the Cowboys expect that to change now that Prescott is eating up an even larger percentage of the cap? Building a Super Bowl-caliber roster around him would be a monumental challenge, even for a team that drafts as well as Dallas.

While the team’s failures aren’t solely his fault, Dak Prescott has failed to lead the Cowboys past the NFC divisional round during his eight seasons as their starting QB. (Ryan Kang/Getty Images)

Conclusion

There’s no easy answer to this. The most sensible strategy is probably for the Cowboys to cap their offer at $60 million per year, and if Prescott wants to wait for free agency and another team goes above that, let him go. Sure, it’s easy to say from a distance that the Cowboys should let their MVP-caliber QB walk, but the Cowboys may be uniquely positioned to do what few other teams can.

There is no GM under pressure in Dallas. It is Jerry and Stephen Jones, and they are not going anywhere. If they want Prescott gone, no one is going to fire them for making a mistake (if that turns out to be the case).

Suppose they do, what would be their path forward?

Sam Darnold, Jacoby Brissett, and Justin Fields are likely the best free agents available next season. Brissett jumps out in my NFL Projection Model as the most efficient of the three, and while the drop from Prescott to Brissett is significant (my model suggests Dallas would be 2.5-3.0 wins worse this year with that change at QB), my model can’t predict how much better the roster could be with Dallas reallocating the money it would have paid Prescott.

Think about it: The Cowboys could easily re-sign Lamb and Parsons without worrying about the cost. They could then use the savings to pursue another wide receiver (Tee Higgins or Chris Godwin?) to make life easier for your bridge (and later rookie) quarterback. That might not make up for losing Prescott, but it would be a good start.

By definition, a bridge starter isn’t a long-term solution, so Dallas would likely draft a rookie to pair with its bridge QB. That could be a tough call, considering Dallas likely won’t pick in the top 20. There’s always the possibility of a trade up in the 2025 NFL Draft. Or perhaps Dallas waits a year and builds out its roster to make it a better landing spot for a rookie in 2026.

While neither option is exciting, the question comes down to what gets you closer to a return to the Super Bowl: Prescott with a less talented roster and/or potential salary cap issues down the road? Or is it better to reset with a bridge quarterback/rookie?

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Ultimately, if Prescott is my quarterback for $60 million, I believe I can manipulate the rising salary cap enough to build a competitive roster. But that’s where I draw the line. There comes a point where the price is too high and the future salary cap issues make it nearly impossible to build a championship-caliber roster around him. So if he leaves, I’m more than happy to enter a new era of the Dallas Cowboys.

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; Top photo: Cooper Neill/Getty Images)