Theories why Dak Prescott may be chasing more years

Reasons why Dak Prescott may be holding out for more years than he’s being offered.

The Dallas Cowboys find themselves in a quandary. While it isn’t one that’s unfamiliar to any NFL team or any team in professional sports, for that matter, it is one that isn’t the most desirable one to be in.

The Cowboys find themselves locked into a scenario where they have failed to get their most important player locked into a long term deal. This comes after all we have heard from the organization, mainly Jerry Jones (who is the organization, or at least its mouthpiece), is that he wants Dak to be the guy for a long time.

While the organization isn’t alone in their stalemating, Dak Prescott and his camp have a ton to do with it all not happening as well. While I totally agree with him and his premise of wanting to be compensated as he feels he deserves to be, as a fan, it pains me to see him not taking the steps on his part as well to get it done.

This goes especially for the fact that we are steadily approaching the point in time where this could start to become a major issue, disturbance, and hindrance to the team as a whole and what they want to get done in this upcoming season.

We don’t know why it’s taking so long, but we do wish it would get done, one way or another. We can’t begin to speak on why the Cowboys haven’t budged on their demands or leaned towards Dak’s, with it more than likely having something to do with not wanting to set or reset the quarterback market with Prescott.

While that is the case on the Cowboys’ side, we also don’t know why Dak Prescott is failing to bend on his demands either. Unlike the perspective of the franchise though, where the owners and the billionaire franchises seem to set the rules as they go, we do have a bit of insight as to what Prescott may be thinking.

Here’s two bipolar theories on why Dak Prescott may be chasing length over raw figures

In that light, here are two theories and on either end of a potential contract, as to why Prescott may be holding out for more years as opposed to a bigger raw number in shorter deals.

If you take a look at the front end of contracts, most likely in the form of a signing bonus or a large part of the “guaranteed at signing” dollars, that is a reason to seek more years. The longer a deal is for, the more money the “guarantees” theoretically would tend to be in a further along market.

We use “further along market” here to indicate progression from year to year or in example, the difference in contracts based on market value when a quarterback signs in one year as opposed to the contracts earned by others in the years that follow. Let’s look at an example of the phenomena of the first theory.

Matt Ryan signed an extension in 2018 for $150 million across five years, with $94.5 million guaranteed at signing. After you take away his yearly salaries for the five years, which are typically manipulated initially and often to make the salary cap work in totality, he received a signing bonus of $46.5 million.

By negotiating a deal with more years, it increases your overall years which then in turn and most likely increases the amount of the initial big payday in the form of a signing bonus, because the slice of the pie here is determined by the overall size of the pie. That is one theory from the front end of a potential deal as to why Dak may be holding out for more years.

ALSO READ: How much will outside negotiations help Dak Prescott?

When you look at the back end of a potential deal and keeping in mind that we just mentioned how quarterbacks contracts are often manipulated and finagled with to make the salary cap situation work, that is the second reason why Dak Prescott could be holding out for more years.

Looking at the same fact that a longer deal would inevitably produce a larger overall number, any further deals, extensions, renegotiations, or restructures would then be based on that original larger figure. The only way that contract is completely torn up is if Dak severely outplays it and wants to ask for more money, not less.

By setting the bar high from the beginning, a larger overall number because it’s more years worth of money, that is the baseline for all future negotiations. When thinking about the fact that he seems to be thinking about things in the longterm, this would be a more than feasible theory as to why he might be seeking out more years on a deal.

No matter which way you look at it, again, we all wish the Dallas Cowboys and Dak Prescott would just get the thing done already. Whatever the reasons may be, it would be nice if we see both sides give a little bit to strike a long term deal.