Dak Prescott’s path to Cowboys exit now clearer than ever after Tua, Love deals

It is all going to boil down to how much Jerry Jones values Dak Prescott. For a former fourth-round pick out of Mississippi State, Prescott has already massively overachieved as the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. However, he is entering the final year of his four-year deal worth $40 million in average annual value. He should be commanding near top of the market on a new deal.

Last Friday saw the Miami Dolphins give Tua Tagovailoa a four-year, $212.4 million extension. He may have been a top-five overall pick out of Alabama back in 2020, but he hasn't won a playoff game yet. Tagovailoa is also incredibly injury-prone and will be netting some $53.1 million in AAV going forward. As if that was not enough, get a load of what the Green Bay Packers are going to pay Jordan Love...

Love has started one full season as the face of the Packers franchise. While he did play well and did beat Prescott's Cowboys in the NFC Wild Card round, did Love earn the four-year, $220 million extension he got from Green Bay? He is going to be pulling in $55 million in terms of AAV. Love started one full season's worth of games, folks?! Man, does it pay to be an NFL starting quarterback.

To make matters even worse, ESPN's Adam Schefter tried to break down exactly what is going on inside the Cowboys' front office while appearing on Monday's episode of The Pat McAfee Show. While he refuted a previous report that Jerry Jones' unwillingness to pay his top players had something to do with the up for grabs money stemming from DirecTV, he said it was far more odd.

Here is the clip of Schefter saying that the Cowboys only really have themselves to blame in all this.

Basically, the Cowboys' reluctance to be proactive in getting their key contributors signed will only hurt them in the end. Not getting CeeDee Lamb signed before the Justin Jefferson deal was bad. Now it appears that not getting Prescott signed before the Tagovailoa and Love deals is even worse. Prescott would now stand to make somewhere in the $60 to even $64 million in AAV range in 2025.

Somebody is going to be paying Prescott a four-year deal worth at minimum $240 million in AAV.

The bigger question I think we all should have is are the Cowboys going to be that team or not?

Dak Prescott's opportunity to leave Dallas Cowboys is now wide-open

Because Jones has been dragging his feet on extending pretty much everyone of note within the Cowboys building, it is unfortunately going to cost him probably being able to see his team win one more Super Bowl in his lifetime. Even if the Cowboys were to pay Prescott some ridiculous number, possibly even as much as $65 million in AAV, where is the rest of the money going to go, Lebowski?

Although I fully expect for the salary cap to go up precipitously with each passing year, so will every position group of note's top contracts. While I remain skeptical that Lamb should be getting top-tier money at wide receiver, I don't have a problem of giving Prescott the best contract in the sport. He has been a top-eight passer in the league for years. Therefore, he should be able to reset the market.

While I do think the Cowboys have a decent chance of retaining him, as it is so hard for quarterbacks of his caliber to hit the open market, what is going to be left in Dallas once Prescott puts pen to paper on another mega-extension? He will not be returning to the same Cowboys team he could conceivably leave. It is truth remarkable how unbelievably badly the Cowboys screwed this thing up.

Prescott's price is not going down at all, so the Cowboys are missing out with every passing day.