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FRISCO — A defiant Jerry Jones didn’t flinch after the Cowboys’ worst game of the season Monday night in a 28-14 home loss to Tennessee.
The Cowboys owner said afterward that he had no plans to make a midseason coaching change with Jason Garrett despite a 3-5 start and the following day said that quarterback Dak Prescott will get a contract extension.
When pressed on his radio show on KRLD-FM about Prescott’s long-term future, Jones said, “Listen, he’s young, and he’s going to get extended.”
This was just hours after Prescott continued to struggle protecting the football with two turnovers against the Titans.
But Jones didn’t back down Friday on KRLD-FM when asked what motivated him to say that Prescott is already locked in for an extension even though he’s yet to complete his third season.
“The decision as to the timing as to when [he’ll get extended] was not addressed,” Jones said. “What you want to hear from me is, ‘Where are you regarding Dak?’ Dak is our quarterback now and into the future without equivocation, and that’s the reason for making that statement.”
Jones’ sooner-than-needed declaration that Prescott will get a contract extension not only flies in the face of recent decisions by NFL teams but also sets the stage for the Cowboys to award a player who appears to be trending in the wrong direction.
The Cowboys can begin negotiating with Prescott on a long-term extension after the season. But they don’t have to sign him to a new deal until his rookie contract is up after 2019.
Prescott was asked this week about Jones already saying he’s going to get his contract extended.
“I’m worried about the Eagles,” Prescott said. “That’s the only thing I can control right now is everything we’re doing this week going into this game. That’s my only focus.”
This much is clear: Prescott has been one of the league’s top bargains since the Cowboys drafted him in the fourth round in 2016. He’s been playing on a four-year rookie contract that will pay him a total of only $2.7 million.
Risky business
The Cowboys would be bucking NFL trends by extending the contract of Prescott.
Seattle’s Russell Wilson — a 2012 third-round pick — is the only quarterback drafted in the last 10 years outside of the first or second rounds who has received a second contract from the team that selected him.
But the Seahawks signed Wilson to a four-year, $87.6 million contract extension in July 2015 after he led them to back-to-back Super Bowls (including a championship in 2013). Prescott hasn’t even won a playoff game.
Washington elected not to give 2012 fourth-round pick Kirk Cousins a contract extension in 2016 after his rookie deal was done. Instead, the Redskins used their franchise tag on him in back-to-back seasons for a total of about $44 million before moving on this season to Alex Smith.
And if the Cowboys are dead set on giving Prescott an extension, they’d be going against their own philosophy they’ve implemented over the last five years of not signing players to long-term, big-money deals based mostly on past performance.
The Cowboys have avoided free agent mistakes by sticking to their belief of paying players based on future projections rather than putting much weight into past performance.
Prescott was the NFL’s rookie of the year in 2016, leading the Cowboys to a 13-3 record and the playoffs.
But Prescott has regressed over his last 20 starts compared to his first 20 games. Prescott was 15-5 over his first 20 starts with a 66.1 completion percentage, 31 touchdown pbades and only seven interceptions.
Over his last 20 starts, Prescott is 10-10 and completing only 63.4 percent of his pbades for 24 touchdowns and 15 interceptions.
What’s more glaring is that Prescott isn’t protecting the football nearly as well of late as he did earlier in his career. He has twice as many turnovers (22) over his last 20 starts compared to his first 20 (11). One issue has been that Prescott is facing more pressure of late. He’s been sacked 23 more times over his last 20 starts than his first 20.
Gains and losses
Jones isn’t alone, however, in his belief that Prescott is trending in the right direction.
Cowboys coach Jason Garrett and offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said this week they believe Prescott continues to make progress. Of course, their jobs are tied to Prescott’s success, so that response would be expected.
What happens if Jones fires Garrett after the season but extends the contract of Prescott? Will the new head coach be content with Prescott or want to bring in his own quarterback?
Cowboys coaches believe that Prescott’s greatest strengths are his decision-making and leadership. Garrett believes strong decision-making is the greatest quality a quarterback can possess.
But are those qualities so great that they will trump a limited physical skill set that includes accuracy issues that initially forced him to fall to the fourth round?
More to the point: Are Prescott’s decision-making and leadership qualities strong enough to ensure him a $100 million contract? Because that’s likely the kind of commitment the Cowboys will have to make to Prescott to extend his contract by four-plus years.
Cowboys Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach praised Prescott’s leadership skills Friday on KRLD-FM and agrees with Jones that he’s a long-term answer.
“I think Dak is not the problem on offense,” Staubach said. “I think he’s part of it, but I really feel that he can continue to be the quarterback, that if you look at the plus things I think they’ve far outweighed the difficulties at this stage. It’s not going in a great direction right now. I think he can turn it around.”
The Cowboys are also banking on the belief that the best is yet to come for Prescott considering the experience he’s already gained compared to some quarterbacks who didn’t even play their first three seasons, such as Cowboys-ex Tony Romo and Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers.
“The definition of a quarterback is you don’t really know if you have one until the world is down on him, he’s stunk it up the week before, his teammates are even maybe kind of thinking a little hesitation in their thought and that guy steps in that huddle and says, ‘Guys, let’s take it down the field,’ and starts executing and makes it happen,” Jones said Friday. “That’s when you know you’ve got your quarterback.”
Franchise-altering decision
If Jerry Jones gives Dak Prescott a contract extension, it would be only the third time he has given a significant extension to a young quarterback, the others being Troy Aikman and Tony Romo. It’s also rare for NFL teams to offer second contracts to quarterbacks selected outside of the first two rounds of the draft. Here, we compare Prescott’s statistics to pre-extension numbers for Romo and Russell Wilson, a third-round pick and perhaps the best recent comparable to Prescott:
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