‘Healthy’ Prescott symptoms richest contract in Cowboys heritage
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott speaks all through a news convention at the team’s NFL football practice facility in Frisco, Texas, Wednesday, March 10, 2021. The Cowboys and Prescott have finally agreed on the richest contract in club heritage, two decades after negotiations began with the star quarterback. (AP Image/LM Otero)
AP
Dak Prescott walked briskly and bounced up the pair of ways onto the phase for the announcement of the richest agreement in the storied heritage of the Dallas Cowboys for their hottest star quarterback.
It was 5 months practically to the day Wednesday considering that the gruesome ankle harm that finished Prescott’s 2020 year and led to speedy concerns regardless of whether the significant payday would ever come right after a prolonged stalemate.
The answer arrived two times earlier when the sides — two several years soon after they started chatting — agreed on a $160 million, 4-year deal with the NFL’s next-greatest yearly normal guiding Kansas City star Patrick Mahomes.
Now Prescott is all set to reply the issues about coming again from the compound fracture and dislocation of his suitable ankle in opposition to the New York Giants on Oct. 11.
“I considered about jogging out here and leaping up on the stage,” said Prescott, who broke into a wild smile although crossing the stage at group headquarters in Frisco, north of Dallas. “But I never know if you all are ready for that. But I’m healthier.”
Prescott wouldn’t set a timeline on when he would be absolutely cleared, but stated, “I’ll be prepared when it matters.”
For now, Prescott was basking in the hourlong information meeting that served as a celebration of the fourth $100 million agreement in club background. The very first was quarterback Tony Romo, whose back again injury in the 2016 preseason opened the doorway for Prescott to be the starter from the first game of his rookie year.
Prescott’s deal provided NFL data with a $66 million signing reward and a very first-12 months worth of $75 million. There is a no-trade clause, and the Cowboys can’t use the franchise tag soon after the contract. This arrangement arrived a day right before a deadline for the Cowboys to area the tag on Prescott for a second consecutive season.
Most importantly for the Cowboys as they test to stop a 25-yr run devoid of even reaching the NFC championship recreation, Prescott’s salary cap hit will be $22.2 million in its place of $37.7 million below the tag. Dallas requires aid on protection and now has some funds to devote.
“I feel fantastic about our long term,” operator Jerry Jones said. “I don’t head telling you the most important rationale I experience good is the guy sitting proper subsequent door to me.”
Right before the damage, Prescott experienced begun just about every activity since the commencing of his rookie calendar year immediately after Romo received harm. Prescott was the 2016 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year though top the Cowboys to the No. 1 seed in the NFC, and two several years later on received his first playoff recreation although reaching his second Professional Bowl.
Negotiations on a new deal commenced the pursuing offseason, when Prescott was likely into the closing yr of a four-yr offer that paid him a full of about $4 million as a fourth-spherical pick. That integrated $2 million in the final season.
Prescott’s abbreviated 2020 year was on a $31.4 million franchise tag, and participating in on a next tag would have noticeably amplified the probability of the 27-calendar year-aged QB leaving in cost-free company upcoming 12 months.
“Never in a million years did I think about not currently being a Cowboy at the time I place on this uniform and put on this star,” Prescott explained. “So through it all, through the two years I guess you can say or a lot more, there was hardly ever a slight doubt in my brain that I wouldn’t wear the star for the rest of my life.”
Jones hardly ever wavered in indicating he thought of Prescott a franchise quarterback, but acknowledged the drawn-out negotiations designed debate that took on “a everyday living of its own” about irrespective of whether the Cowboys thought in the former Mississippi Condition standout for the lengthy expression.
“Don’t confuse that with how right we assume this choice is, and how correct and how substantially it’s been there from the extremely beginning,” Jones reported. “This fits what I and what I want our Cowboy enthusiasts to think about when we believe about the Dallas Cowboys.”
Even right before Prescott’s harm, the Cowboys started off slowly and gradually in coach Mike McCarthy’s very first year. But Prescott was however leading the NFL in yards passing for the league’s No. 1 offense. Those people figures plummeted as Dallas dropped its initial 4 games with no Prescott, slipping to 2-7 on the way to a 6-10 complete.
With the huge contract, Prescott gets to be the focal stage of ending by much the longest stretch in franchise record with no achieving a Tremendous Bowl — a lot more than twice as prolonged as the 10 yrs it took Dallas to go from an expansion group to its 1st Super Bowl physical appearance throughout the 1970 year.
Since going 13-3 as a rookie, Prescott’s typical-year file is 29-24. And he will be trying to conclusion a two-calendar year run of lacking the playoffs, which past took place to the Cowboys in 2013.
“Eagerness, pleasure, anxiousness, to give this business and the Jones relatives all the things they invested in,” Prescott stated. “That’s a Super Bowl, and that is to go earn.”