In a pre-COVID world, that was too much money to give Dak.

In this current climate, where we don't even know if/when there will be football (or for how long), he's a fucking idiot for not running to sign that thing.

The difference between Dak leading the Cowboys and Dalton leading the Cowboys is negligible. Dak is not a game-changing quarterback. He's not Mahomes, or Russell Wilson, or Brees or Jackson or Watson or even Rodgers (although Rodgers is about to exit the "game-changing QB" club, just as Brady did last season). Those guys above can add wins to their team's total just by being under center. They deserve big money. Dak does not. Compared to what Dalton is making, they're better off putting that Dak money to good use on surrounding players.
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Cowherd quoted one of the advanced metric sites earlier today, which said that Dak was worth about 4 points more than Dalton per game.
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That's the difference between the 6th ranked offense for the 'Boys last year and the 16th ranked.

I mean...that's not nothing.

The Chiefs were ranked 7th in scoring defense last year. That was fueled almost entirely by the 11.5 ppg they gave up over their last 6 games.

Through the first 11 games of the season they gave up 22 PPG. At that pace they'd have ended up ranked 15th in the league in scoring defense.

And I know it's a bit of a twisted logic because it's comparing offense to defense, but defensive improvement has been our focus for a couple years so it's what we feel the most. Had the Chiefs stayed at the same level, we'd have shrugged at the end of the year and would've thought "okay - the defense is alright but it's not gonna win us anything - Mahomes will have to do it for us..."

You let Dak continue to run the Cowboys offense at a top 20% of the league level and they have a puncher's chance. But if they hove around the middle with Dalton - that's gone. They essentially have a .500 ceiling.

Someone will give Dak that money and if the Cowboys have to roll with Dalton, they won't be anything more than a fringe playoff team. So when you have a market set (rightly or wrongly) at a certain level and a team chooses not to pay market prices to remain relevant, that should be seen as an indictment of that organization.
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What an anus
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Okay, I can see all of that.

But is that all worth $40 million/year? Give him $40 million/year, and they can kiss having that ensemble of OL, Zeke, Cooper good-bye. And we know that Dak can't carry a team based on his performance thus far. So you pay him, and he loses some of his OL, or some defensive players, or the ability to shore up that receiving corp. And then DAL is back to being a 8-8 team. Again.

Which was my point really. Without a great top-tier team surrounding Dak, he's a little better than Andy. Pay him and they can't afford his supporting cast.
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Not very many because the Chiefs are usually leading games heading into 4th quarter.
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This is a lose/lose situation.

If the Cowboys pay Dak, they’re probably fucked. If they don’t, they’re probably fucked too.

That’s why I’m so critical of young QB’s. If they aren’t elite, paying them probably won’t work out.

Goff is the most recent example of this.
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Well if he's looking for $45 in the last year, that puts his AAV at, what, $37 million?

Where else you gonna spend that if you're Dallas? They'll have moved on from Lawrence by 2022 at this rate. They have the other important parts already in their salary structure other than Vander Esch who may simply not be able to keep playing. They'll likely have maybe $160 million on their cap by then with a projected $250 million figure.

They don't have any other obvious extensions needed right now and the FA market is ALWAYS inflated so plowing money into FAs around a bottom 1/3 QB isn't gonna be a more efficient use of the space.

I just don't see spending less money on a worse QB making them any better because that freed up cap space isn't needed to keep guys like Cooper, Elliott, Collins, Martin or Tyron Smith. Those guys fit even with a big deal for Dak. The rest is fairly replaceable.

I'm not saying Dak's an outstanding player - I'm simply saying that I don't think the Cowboys are better over the next 3-4 years by moving on from him and reallocating his money towards less critical options they bring in through FA. And when the market dictates that Dak can get that kind of payday in FA (and I think it does), then you might as well bite the bullet and pay your guy.
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If Jerry was smart (and he's not), he would have traded Dak for 2021 First Round pick along with a few mid-round choices while heading into the season with Dalton at the helm.

They'd likely finish in the Top Ten, maybe even Top 5 because their defense needs a lot of help, and with two first rounders and say an extra 3rd and a 5th, go all in on the Trevor Lawrence sweepstakes.
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Yeah, but if you're an NFL team you can't just say "If we don't have Mahomes, we're fucked..."

Even if you probably are.

So you have to pick the best of less than stellar options and then figure out how to make it work. Sure, they'd like to stumble into another Dak or Wilson and have him dirt cheap for several years. But man - Jordan Love is going in the first round these days. Teams are hard up for QBs and unless they draft top 5, attempting to draft a guy is likely to yield a worse QB than what they have. The demand for young QBs is so high that any truly good bets will go top 5.

The QB market is fucked up. Everyone knows this. But at the same time, nobody seemed to be too concerned about it during CBA discussions. If it was something the owners were really all that worried about, they'd have addressed it then.
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But at a point there's just no such thing as 'all-in'.

If you're the Jags and you get 1.1 - there's not a Godfather offer that can even be made. They're NOT trading out of that pick. Offer 'em the RGIII deal and they still won't move out of that spot, IMO.

And it's that way for a lot of teams - pretty much any of them that may end up at 1.1. If they're sitting there, they have QB problems. And if they have QB problems, they're not gonna move out of the catbird seat for the premier prospect of the last decade or so.
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What's happened is crap teams have way over paid for ordinary QBs from from fear of starting over. Stafford, Ryan, Tanny, Cutler and so on and so forth. Now Dak is next for more money and recent history is that he should get more than the previous QB just becuse of the position.
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And Kirk. Accomplished nothing but get big money.
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It all depends on which teams ends up in the Top 5. If the Top 5 is populated with teams like the Browns, Cardinals, Dolphins, Jets, Bengals, Giants, Detroit, Atlanta or the Rams - teams that already have their QB position set - they're going to take picks from the highest bidder.

That said, there are six possible first round QB's in the 2021 draft so if the Cowboys can't make that trade to #1 overall, they're going to get a damn good QB for far less than $30 or $35 or $40 million per, which is what Dak will cost, but without the credentials that are normally attached to a contract of that size.

But as we all know, Jerry is too stubborn to tank, even though that would most likely be his best course of action.
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This is what I’ve been telling my friend that’s a Cowboys fan for a while now.

It doesn’t even have to be Lawrence IMO. Trey Lance looks like a phenomenal prospect as well. I’m not a huge Fields fan, but as the #3 QB, he’s pretty damn good too.
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