DeMarcus Lawrence reveals initial ‘disrespectful’ offer from Cowboys

The offseason is always a hectic time, but the Dallas Cowboys have had quite the tumultuous 2022 offseason. It all started with the team being severely over the cap. Then, the rumors started to fly about who would and wouldn’t be cap casualties. One of those potential cut names was defensive end, DeMarcus Lawrence. Thankfully, the Cowboys were able to negotiate with the defender and sign him to a three-year deal worth $40 million.

This seems to follow a typical pattern for the Cowboys. At the time of writing, the Cowboys are one of the only teams in the NFL who have yet to sign a free agent from another team. So far, the team has been able to make moves to keep Dalton Schultz, Michael Gallup, Noah Brown, Malik Hooker, Jeremy Sprinkle, and Lawrence. An interesting factor about Lawrence’s deal is that $30 million of that money is guaranteed. That makes Lawrence the first defensive end in NFL history to have seven straight years of his contract fully guaranteed.

But it took a lot of negotiating to get there, according to Lawrence. The Cowboys’ defensive end went on the “All Things Covered” podcast to chat with Bryant McFadden and Patrick Peterson about everything that’s gone on in the past couple of weeks. Lawrence said that he basically had one foot out the door when the Cowboys presented their initial offer – a deal he deemed “disrespectful.” The front office wanted to offer him a one-year, $10 million deal. Just a reminder that he was previously set to make a base salary of $19 million in 2022 and $21 million in 2023.

Lawrence said the deal was disrespectful to him and to what he did for the franchise. Even though Lawrence didn’t want to move his family out of Dallas, he was fully prepared to part ways with the Cowboys after that laughable offer. The full explanation is in the tweet below, but here’s what he said to Stephen Jones:

"“I wish you all would cut me. And Stephen’s like, ‘All right, I’m going to have to bring your offer to Jerry to see what he says. But I’m pretty sure he’s going to be pretty pissed about it, because he just gave you $65 million.’”"

Cowboys DE DeMarcus Lawrence revealed that Stephen Jones initially gave him a one-year, $10 million ‘disrespectful’ offer

Lawrence was especially upset given that he was trying to negotiate to help the team get some salary-cap relief. Here’s how the conversation continued:

"“My response was, ‘He didn’t give me [expletive]; I earned it. If Jerry wants to keep me here, he has to understand that. This is what I’m worth. And plus, I’m actually showing love and helping y’all out by offering y’all the relief and cap space by doing this deal with me. Let’s go out here and have a fruitful free agency, pick up the guys that we need in order to win a Super Bowl because if I don’t get this number, I won’t be here to help.”"

After everything that happened with Randy Gregory and now hearing this from Tank, you have to start questioning some of the front office’s choices. Although the two-time Pro Bowler did eventually get a contract he was happy with, his flexibility saved the Cowboys $13 million. Why were they lowballing him when he was trying to cooperate? Keep in mind that because Lawrence wasn’t a free agent, he couldn’t easily walk away as Gregory did.

At the end of the day, the deal thankfully got done. But to offer a player who has given your team eight years of service a ridiculous contract when he is already compromising a pay cut seems like an incredibly poor choice. Thankfully, Jerry Jones saw that and gave Lawrence a deal he could agree to. Now, we have to wait and see what they do with the money they saved on his new deal.