After years of waiting, the Dallas Cowboys have negotiated a Dak Prescott contract extension to make him the second highest paid (in terms of average per year) quarterback in the National Football League. Cowboys Fans have argued left and right over the potential Dak Prescott contract extension for the last 3 seasons. They have asked questions like: Is he worth $25 million…$30 million…$35 million…$40+ million? Will or should the Cowboys let him walk? Is it worth it to pay ANY quarterback top dollar? Is a multi million dollar Dak Prescott contract going to ruin the Dallas Cowboys salary cap? Well the debate is over, because the Dallas Cowboys franchise quarterback has been secured for the foreseeable future.
Throughout this whole process there have been two main factions of Cowboys fans in disagreement over this deal. It is not those who are “Dak fan’s” and those who are “Dak hater’s.” Those mortal enemies will continue to exist no matter what happens with the Dak Prescott contract in the future and will continue to argue long after Prescott retires. No, it is the the two opposing sides from a salary cap point of view. One side believes that a franchise quarterback has a certain market value, it steadily increases as does the salary cap, and that the salary cap can be manipulated to such a degree that it doesn’t really exist at all. The other side is conscious of the salary cap, does not want to overspend on any player, and believes that it is impossible to win a Super Bowl by paying a quarterback a certain % of the cap. I tend to fall in the category of the former but the greatest truth is really somewhere in between.
First let’s dispel the myth that the salary cap doesn’t exist. It does, it is just something that doesn’t need to hold a team back if they want to aggressively pursue building a championship roster. Many long term contracts are designed to be restructured with salaries converted to signing bonuses in future years which then frees up space down the road. The cap is always rising, even with the anomaly of 2020, the salary cap is expected to receive additional boosts from inflation, gambling revenue, new TV deals, expanded playoff schedules, and eventually an 18 game regular season. The salary cap can be manipulated, managed, and side stepped often, however to say the salary cap doesn’t exist is an entirely false narrative. Eventually a team may have to hit the reset button completely. Often this occurs when a championship window starts to close and a team needs to consider rebuilding. Fortunately, by cutting a few players, trading others, and taking on some dead money for a year or two, it can be quickly corrected. This is not a situation that can hold a team back for several years. For that reason, teams should not fear the salary cap. If they believe they have a franchise quarterback, they should roll the dice, invest in a long term deal, and try to win a championship. If the quarterback fails, you can move on just like the Rams and Eagles did. If the quarterback has not failed you but the team has, you still have the option to rebuild the roster and maybe even change the coaching staff. The Seahawks had to do it and despite not winning another Super Bowl they have consistently been a playoff team the last few years. Green Bay did it with Aaron Rodgers and they struggled for a short period before quickly rebuilding into a contender. It is much easier to build a team around a good quarterback than it is to find a good quarterback to come in and become the final piece on a very good team like Tom Brady did for the Bucs. That is because positional players that take up a lot of salary cap space just don’t have as long of a shelf life as other players and have to replaced sooner. It is the quarterbacks alone who tend to endure and therefore will still be around before and after a rebuild. Additionally, while there is often plenty of available free agents at most positions, a franchise quarterback only rarely ever reaches free agency. When they do, it is typically at the end of the road or absurdly expensive.
The counter point to the argument of dishing out top market value for a quarterback is often pointed out by the fact that no team has won a Super Bowl with a quarterback taking up more than 13% of the salary cap since Steve Young in 1994. The simple fact that is often overlooked with this statistic, is that it is very difficult statistically to actually win a Super Bowl. With all other factors being equal, the odds are 1 in 32 or 3% for any one team to win it all in a given year. Obviously, some organisations are better at it than others and they have managed to win multiple Super Bowls in recent years while others have not even come close. The sample size is extremely small as well. Since the NFL introduced the salary cap in 1994, there have been 27 Super Bowls with 16 different franchises winning the trophy. Since the NFL capped the rookie salaries in 2011, there have only been 10 Super Bowls with 8 different winning teams. Consider that on any given year, there are only 10 or so quarterbacks that actually take up more than 13% of the salary cap. That is less than 1/3 of the teams in the league. Therefore, all other things being equal, the odds that a quarterback in any given year, who has a salary more than 13% of that years salary cap are only about 30%. Even with those odds and the small sample size, it’s not as if no quarterback has come close. Matt Ryan and the Falcons blew a 28-3 lead against the Patriots and lost in overtime in SB LI, but they were so close to winning it all and that year, Matt Ryan accounted for 15% of his team’s salary cap. Peyton Manning lost to Drew Brees in the Super Bowl the year he accounted for 17% of his team’s cap. It is not as though Ryan and Manning lost because they were making too much money and their teams weren’t competitive. There is also a pretty long list of winners that were very close to that 13% threshold such as Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Peyton Manning, and even the poster boy for this argument Tom Brady, who accounted for over 12% in both 2018 and as recently as this past season in Tampa Bay. The fact is, there is a pretty long list of quarterbacks who got paid lucrative contracts and then went on to win or appear in a Super Bowl. The % of cap hit is always spread out differently for every year over the duration of the contract which further skews this statistic, so this idea that you can’t spend money on a quarterback and win a championship is utter nonsense.
Still, there are plenty of folks who insist that a team cannot be competitive after “overpaying” for a quarterback. Never mind that history has proven over and over again that paying top market value today, quickly means middle of the pack in a few short years as the next QB negotiates their deal. Naysayers will tell you that only a Hall of Fame quarterback who can carry a team is worthy of the big payday. They never acknowledge that even those great HOF quarterbacks are incapable of winning a championship without a great supporting cast. They will point to guys like Matt Stafford, Derek Carr, and Kirk Cousins and tell you that if you pay top dollar for an average quarterback, you will never win a championship. Disregarding that the San Francisco 49ers came oh so close only a year in half after making Jimmy Garoppolo the highest paid quarterback in the league. According to folks with this mindset, if you don’t have Brady, Rodgers, or Brees, the popular model to follow is the Seahawks formula of having a cheap young quarterback on a rookie deal. That way the team can use the money they are saving at quarterback to bring in quality free agents and build a championship roster. It is a great model, but what many people do not realise is that it is nearly impossible to accomplish that feat. Since 1994 there have only been 6 quarterbacks who have led their teams to a Super Bowl championship while still playing on their rookie deals. Of those 6, only four of them were drafted in the first round, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Flacco, Eli Manning, and Ben Roethlisberger. Two of them were drafted in later rounds and not projected to be starters (Russell Wilson, Tom Brady). Since 2011, when the rookie contracts were capped by the NFL, only Patrick Mahomes and Russell Wilson accomplished the feat. Those numbers do not really represent how difficult it is to actually draft a quarterback capable of leading a team to a championship. For those Cowboys fans that believe Dallas would have been better off drafting a quarterback in the first round instead of paying the Dak Prescott contract, here is a little context:
- Since 1993 74 quarterbacks were drafted in the first round of the NFL draft and only 4 led their teams to Super Bowl victories on their rookie deals (5.4%)
- Since 2011 32 quarterbacks were drafted in the first round of the NFL draft and only 1 went on to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory (3%)
- Since 2011 118 total quarterbacks were drafted and only 2 went on to lead their teams to Super Bowl victories on their rookie deals (1.7%)
These numbers represent quarterbacks who actually led their teams to Super Bowl victories. If you wanted to include Carson Wentz into the mix, since the Philadelphia Eagles did win a championship while he was still on his rookie deal, the percentages are still minuscule. Consider also that many of the quarterbacks widely considered the best in the NFL right now (Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Drew Brees, Deshaun Watson, Dak Prescott, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Russell Wilson) were not the first quarterbacks selected in their respective draft classes. It goes to show, it is not easy to draft and develop a quarterback and the odds to find a young quarterback and go on to win a Super Bowl are nearly impossible.
The Dak Prescott contract has received mixed reactions from some the Dallas Cowboys faithful because of this false perception of “salary cap hell”. My own definition of salary cap hell is having tons of cap space yet not having anyone worthy of spending it on. What every Cowboy fan needs to do going forward, is to come to terms with the Dak Prescott Contract an acknowledge these three things.
- It is NOT impossible to win a championship by paying a quarterback top of the market money.
- It IS nearly impossible to find a franchise quarterback, especially in the draft.
- Winning Super Bowls is very hard. It is far more likely that the team does NOT win one, even thought they signed Dak, but it becomes all the more difficult without a viable option at quarterback. Therefore, it was worth every penny to pay Dak Prescott.
*Photo by Joe Glorioso All-Pro Reels https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode
All Data and Statistics obtained and verified from https://www.pro-football-reference.com/
Salary cap figures and data obtained from https://overthecap.com/