Trevon Diggs beating out $100 million star in CB rankings puts pressure on Cowboys

It'd be in the Dallas Cowboys best interest to extend one of their core players before the start of training camp later this month. Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb and Trevon Diggs are the players in question, but Diggs is the only one who can say he's entering the final year of his contract.

You'd be hard-pressed to come across a fan who doesn't want Dallas to give Diggs a lucrative extension.

He has the best ball skills of any cornerback in the league and has vastly improved the feast or famine aspect of his game by calculating when to jump routes.

While it won't be easy for the Cowboys to navigate extensions for Prescott, Lamb, Diggs and eventually Micah Parsons, this regime preaches retaining homegrown talent and Diggs fills that bill as a former second round pick.

Not to mention, he's awesome at what he does.

In ESPN's new cornerback rankings, Diggs checked in at No. 8, up two spots from last year, and ahead of Browns $100 million CB Denzel Ward.

Cowboys facing pressure to extend Trevon Diggs

Here's how the top-10 shaped out:

1. Patrick Surtain
2. Sauce Gardner 
3. Jalen Ramsey 
4. Jaire Alexander 
5. Darius Slay 
6. Marlon Humphrey 
7. Marshon Lattimore
8. Trevon Diggs 
9. Denzel Ward 
10. A.J. Terrell 

Still just 24 years old, it stands to reason Diggs will continue to climb the CB ladder. The main takeaway here, though, is that Diggs is highly regarded around the league and is considered one of the NFL's premier cornerbacks.

"It's hard to argue with 49 pass breakups and 17 interceptions since 2020. Teams value ball production, and Diggs has it. That's why several voters put him in their top three," Fowler said of the Cowboys star.

"I think he's gotten better at gambling overall. It's still a hindrance to his game, in my opinion," an NFC personnel man said. "I think if he can be more calculated with his ways he can be viewed more like an Asante Samuel Sr."

You know what means, right? The Cowboys face added pressure to get the two-time Pro Bowler extended.

Last year, the Browns gave Ward a five-year, $100.5 million extension, including $45 million guaranteed to make him the highest-paid corner in the league. The Packers followed suit by giving Alexander, who has a case to be No. 1 in these rankings, a four-year, $84 million deal.

Alexander's $21 million AAV (annual average value) is now tops in the league, so $20 million per year will likely be the baseline for Diggs' negotiations.

Both Ward (No. 9) and Alexander (No. 4) cracked the top-10, but the fact Diggs beats out Ward months after the Browns standout (temporarily) became the game's wealthiest CB punctuates the fact Dallas has to pony up.

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