The game has been changed once again. On Monday July 6th, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes signed a ten year extension with the team with a potential payout of just over $500 million. Mahomes’s new deal is the richest in sports history, and will certainly have an impact on quarterback contracts in the near future. The market has officially been reset.
Now to be fair, Mahomes is only 24 years old and has already established himself as the best quarterback in the league. While other quarterbacks might use his contract as a reference to get more money, it is highly unlikely that any team will cut a half-a-billion dollar check for a different quarterback in the near future.
Length of a contact tends to matter for agents and their clients. The longer the deal is, the more likely it will be that some money gets left on the table. Dak and his agent are looking for a shorter contract that aligns more with recent quarterback extensions, such as those of Russell Wilson, Jared Goff, and Carson Wentz.
But of course, the amount of money a contract offers is more important. Prescott is poised to make $31.4 million this year due to the team franchise tagging him. Based on that, $32 million per year seems to be the lowest Prescott and his team would go for in a new contract. The deals that Wentz ($32 million per year), Goff ($33.5 million per year), and Wilson ($35 million per year) have signed make for a nice range of possible salaries Prescott could ask for. But the Cowboys not signing him before Mahomes’s deal could hurt them.
Good quarterbacks are extremely hard to come by. Every year, many teams struggle to find a signal caller who can consistently elevate their teams. Having a quarterback who is in the lineup every Sunday while also possessing above average leadership qualities is a huge win for a team. Dak Prescott is a top ten quarterback in the league and certainly deserves an extension. Jerry Jones and company definitely shot themselves in the foot by not signing Dak sooner, and they will feel it in their wallets when (if) they finally do extend him.
With the way things are trending in the NFL, it would not be absurd for the Cowboys to sign Dak to a deal worth a little more per year than what Russell Wilson is making right now. Is Dak on Russell Wilson’s level? No, of course not. But Dallas cannot risk sending Prescott away only to rely on a rookie to take over the offense. Prescott is far too valuable in this sense. If I had to make a prediction, it would be that when Dak finally does sign his deal it will be worth $37 million per year. At the end of the day, though, Jerry Jones has nobody to blame but himself for costing the Cowboys some extremely valuable cap space over the next few years.
