Dak Prescott shouldn’t settle for a contract less than he thinks he’s worth

Dak Prescott is too good to take a hometown discount from the Dallas Cowboys.

And we thought the Kirk Cousins negotiations in Washington were a big deal!

Until he puts pen to paper, we’re going to talk about Dak Prescott‘s ongoing contract saga ad nauseam. He plays the most important position on the most popular team in the most popular sport in the United States of America. The Dallas Cowboys know they need to pay their franchise quarterback what his worth, and the negotiation process is only intensifying.

While we should expect a deal to be in place by the July 15 deadline, Prescott should not settle for anything below market value. The franchise tagged he’s been slapped with should net him a cool $31 million for 2020, but he shouldn’t sign a deal for anything less than $35 million annually under any circumstances. He’s done enough to earn Russell Wilson money on his new contract.

Though the price range is somewhere in the vicinity of $35 million to $40 million annually, despite rumors of being as high as $45 million a year, this contractual ordeal is all about number of years more than it is average annual salary. Prescott’s camp wants a four-year deal, while the Cowboys would prefer something of at least five. Prescott wants to enter free agency again in his early 30s.

Dak Prescott should not settle for a bad deal with the Dallas Cowboys.

Ultimately, the Cowboys and Prescott will likely agree to terms on a four-year deal worth roughly $37.5 million annually. This will make Prescott the highest paid quarterback in football, although he’ll be quickly surpassed by Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson and Lamar Jackson in the coming years. Prescott should fight for every penny the Cowboys need to pay him on a new contract.

The reason for this is there are no guarantees he’ll even get another bite at the apple. If you want proof, look no further than the guy backing him up in Dallas in Andy Dalton. Like Prescott, Dalton wasn’t a first-round pick coming out of college. He led his former team in the Cincinnati Bengals to the playoffs a bunch and made several trips to the Pro Bowl as well.

But 2020 is five years removed from 2015 and Dalton is looking to salvage his NFL career as a high-end backup or stop-gap starter. While he did get paid big money by the Bengals, it only happened once. He’s never going to make the money he did at the apex of his powers in the mid-2010s. Prescott and his camp should take a page out of his new teammate Dalton’s book.

At his best, Dalton was a top-12 quarterback in the league when he had a good offensive line blocking in front of him and weapons out the wazoo in Cincinnati. Once the Bengals began their decline, he devolved into being a low-end franchise quarterback for a long-suffering organization. Don’t kid yourself, Prescott’s first four years in the league are eerily similar to Dalton’s first four.

What Prescott and his camp need to do is learn from franchise quarterbacks before him like Dalton, Kirk Cousins and maybe even Wilson. They were all passed over in their respective drafts, but have carved out successful NFL careers for the better part of a decade. They are the blueprints for him getting paid and having staying power in the league without necessarily being bona fide.

If Prescott settles for less than what he thinks he’s worth, then he’s only selling himself short.