(00:00) CeeDee Lamb agrees to 4-year contract extension with Cowboys
(25:00) CeeDee Lamb contract impact on Mike McCarthy & Dak Prescott
PFT Live with Mike Florio
CeeDee Lamb agrees to 4-year contract extension with Cowboys (08/27 Hour 1)
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All savings will vary, discounts not available in all states and situations. A little foot race there between Aaron Donald and LaShawn McQuaid, I would have put my money on Aaron Donald. I mean, LaShawn McQuaid hasn't played in so many years I can't remember when he last played. And Aaron Donald, for what I saw of him when he visited Rams camp, just grab him a helmet and let him go. And I don't mean swing it at members of the Bengals, I mean, put it on and play. Lori, I'm just going to tell you, we can go three years out, four years out, five years out. I would never lose a race to a defense alignment. I don't care when they retire, I'm not losing a defense alignment. Shady, like we got to be better than that. No shot. Well, and Shady doesn't look like he's, you know, let himself completely go, but he looks a little bit above his playing weight, and that's one of the things that always fascinates me, Devin. When you see like an offensive lineman who goes from 350 to 150, and then you see some of these other guys who were always in shape, and they look like they should be playing nose tackle two years, three years after they retire. And I'm, you know, it's just, it's funny to see because it's all over the place once guys stop playing. It's crazy. That's like the norm. Usually like I was just at my nephew's pop Warner practice and Sean O'Hara sitting there training your little kids, and he's ripped up muscles everywhere, and you usually see the small guys blow up, and the big guys get small, and that's my key in life. I like I'm working out all the time because I don't want to be the guy who was always small, and then you see me like, Hey, you play defense a line back in your day. I don't, I don't want those issues. And, you know, since, since you have a biological match who played in the NFL and you're twin brother Jason, it would be kind of funny if one of you got out of shape and the other would stay in shape. It would make it easier for everyone that tries to tell the difference between the two of you. So what, like, would you like flip a coin or draw straws? And one of you just goes cheeseburgers, big Macs, milkshakes all the time, and the other one keeps working out. Then it'll make it easier on everybody else to know who's who. He's calling games now, so every weekend he's on the road, so I'm hoping that goes towards him. I should be healthy. Well, and we got you working now, too. We're on the bell check no days off plan, not just Sundays. No, no, no, no, no. We're going to keep you going, at least I'm going to keep you busy here on Tuesdays for the time being. And that's, that's great. Look, during the season, Chris's schedule and his demands and, you know, he doesn't like to work too hard that, that contributes to more days for other folks. Peter King's retired is just working out perfectly. We got Devin McCordy with us today for as long as he'll do it on Tuesday. He may, he may decide this guy is an even bigger asshole than bell check. I'm not doing this. I think I might have already got that point and realized that maybe you are a little bit of an asshole, but I'll still be here. I like hanging out. It's been a long time. It's like home, right? It's familiar. It's what you're used to. It's part of just, you got to stay in that routine. Otherwise, you're going to gain 75 pounds. See, it's just all part of what you need to do to stay in that right, that right mindset. My wife will say I fit in perfectly with those kind of people. So here I am. All right. All right. And by the way, the show is PFT live. We're on peacocks here, 6M85, Sky Sports action, which at some point very soon will pivot to Sky Sports NFL for the duration of the pro football season podcast where we get your podcast. He's Devin McCordy. I'm Mike Florio. One of us played in the national football league and one of us most definitely did not. So let's get to it. By the way, it was great seeing you the past couple of days. Chris and I usually burn about 10 minutes and it's weird to look down and see 704, but it was nice seeing you. It is strange when you go months not being around someone and all of a sudden it's like it never ended. That was the biggest takeaway I had from everybody being together Sunday and Monday. It's like we just pressed pause and froze. And now it just picks up where it left off last season. And for everyone that doesn't know, we usually come in on Sundays and there's like, there's something to do. There's a production meeting and then we're off rolling. We got there this past Sunday and we all stood in the hallway for about an hour just talking Olympics catching up. And then finally someone was like, what do we have to do? Like what's next? What's playing here? And we just all forgot about it. And I think that for me felt great because it's only year two for me. But you get to know everybody and everybody loves being around each other. So when you go that long, we wanted to know all the good stories like what training camps you've been to, where you been at, where'd you go for the summer break. So it was like the first day of school where everybody's catching up. Even though you could have been calling each other, hanging out, you're just like, well, what do all that when we get back together in the end of August and September. And it was great. It all happened just kind of organically. It wasn't on the schedule. It was just like, boom. And yeah, it's like, yeah, why are we here? What are we doing? We're doing something at some point. We're just hanging around shooting a breeze in the hallway for an hour. So all right. That's kind of what we do here for two hours every day. We have some structure. We have certain things we need to get to. And one of the things we have to get to would happen yesterday while I was traveling home. And I had a feeling it was coming when Jerry Jones, who was never at a loss for words about anything on Saturday after their preseason finale, when he said nothing about CD lamb. No comment. When the hell does Jerry Jones ever have no comment about anything? That should have told us that whatever midnight was, whatever the two sides decided midnight it was, the clock was getting close and they were going to get this done. And what a shock. They got it done. I figured they'd get it done. Just like I assumed the 49ers from Brandon, I, if you're going to get it done and the Bengals and your Marc Chase are going to get it done. We'll talk about them coming up. But for now, man of the moment, CD lamb finally gets his contract. Finally, after all these months with CD, DAC, and Micah, contract uncertainty, can't go all in until you get those guys taken care of, finally they get one of them done. It continues to surprise me because we saw a couple of years ago with Devonta Adams and Tyree Hill both getting traded and getting these massive contracts. I just knew right from there, I'm like, every team, once you get one of these really star receivers, you're just going to get ahead of it and pay these guys because the longer you wait, more guys gets paid. The number continues to go up. These numbers are crazy for receivers, but these guys are going out there and I thought seeing CD lamb be patient, waiting, especially coming up the rookie contract, I was like, hey, oh my gosh, show up. You got to pay me. So it was good to see, but Dallas continues to surprise us on. The whole thing is like, we know what's going to get done. Why? Why are we sitting here at limbo? You're a team that has an opportunity to be a contender this year, but now you have a guy, CD lamb, who hasn't been with the team all summer and I know how hard that is as a player, you're used to your clock is like training camps here. I'm ready to go, but the business is the business. You can never skip over the business as a player. So it always makes you wonder, but I think CD lamb, fantastic, he had an awesome year last year. You look at the Cowboys depth chart, you look at the receiver position, without him in that lineup, there's just nothing to scare you. Nothing makes you go. You know, Brandon Cooks is a good player and I think next to CD lamb, he has an even higher potential to kind of grow, not grow, but be, you know, and it was one-on-one opportunities, go out there and compete and do a good job, but this was a contract they had to get done. They finally got it done. Just always makes you wonder why we're so long. Well, and that's right. And it's all about setting the deadline. Both sides have to agree when this thing must get done. When is the drop dead moment? Because if you start creeping toward whatever your best position is early, they're going to squeeze you off of it when the clock is striking 12, but why is it the preparation for week one? Why isn't it training camp? Look at what the Vikings did with Justin Jefferson in June. So he'd be there for the mandatory minicamp just for a little part like they agreed, start a mandatory minicamp. That's when we're getting this done because that's when they got it done. Otherwise, Jefferson's camp would have sat back and waited or the Vikings would have sat back and waited. They picked the right deadline and it should be no later than the start of training camp for these deals because if you're going to do it anyway, just do it. It's one thing like if the Bengals believe that they're going to be able to kick it through to next year somehow and get one more year out of Jamar chase since he's entering his fourth season, not his fifth, that's different. That's a philosophical position on whether or not you even want to do it. Once you know you want to do it, Devin, there's no reason to wait because you're just going to chew into this player's preparation and the preparation of the other players who have to play with him. It makes it harder for everybody and now there's more pressure on everybody because CD wasn't there. They got to go out and show that he'll be fine and everything will be fine and he may be trying a little too hard. They may be trying a little too hard. It's just an issue that you could have avoided if they just would have agreed that the deadline was a month ago. It always brings me back to the point of what's the relationship head coach to general manager because I'm sure Mike McCarthy is sitting there. I know he would love to have CD therefore mandatory mini camp, the start of training camp, a preseason game, maybe two preseason games. I know he would want that, but it's always that kind of small situation between what the general manager, whoever that is for the end of the team, for the Cowboys is Jerry Jones. I think this is important, what he views as the time to get a player back in the operate. When you have a little bit of that, Mike McCarthy's never going to come out and say, "Hey, I wanted to get this done a long time ago," but they didn't, but now you're sitting there like as a football team, this isn't in our best interest. Maybe as a business, maybe all of those things, it works itself out and we did what we thought was right. But as a football team, why wouldn't I want my guy there? Then when you look at the rest of it, you look at Dak, you look at Michael Parsons, now for Dak, you're already entering your last year. The regular season is right around the corner, so unless they're going to go from mega deal to mega deal for Dak, but it's got now once the season starts. I don't really know if there is a reason to sign a contract. I know the long term, but if you're going to already take all these risks and you watch Kirk Cousins come up in Achilles' injury and still have a huge payday, I'm kind of sitting there like, "Well, I feel like I have a better chance betting on myself playing this whole season and getting even more money in the off season and free agency," so I just don't understand it, but I always think you look at Minnesota, you look at coming together with Kevin O'Connell. I'm sure he has a lot of say when they go and I think it was easy, both sides definitely want Justin Jefferson there, but I think he has a little bit more say saying, "Hey, I know we all want him here," but it would benefit us to have him here by this date for us to be the best team going forward. We lost Kirk Cousins, we have a new quarterback in here, having his presence here will make a difference in our football team. Dak already had a compound fracture of the ankle and still got his four years, 160 million without setting foot on a field after that thing healed, so the injury risk, unless it's career ending, the injury risk maybe isn't what it's cracked up to be for the quarterback position because they just assumed guys are going to come back and be able to play. My theory on Jerry Jones, and we're going to talk later in the program about his recent comments, which really did seem made up. It was like the onion type stuff about why he's still the GM after all these years and what qualifies and equips him and makes him able to do that job, but Devin, one of the things I've tripped across this off season while trying to make sense of the nonsensical. Why don't they get these contract situations worked out the right way with their players who deserve to be paid more than they're making? I think Jerry loves to be in the center of attention, and he loves to give people things to talk about, write about, and he likes to find ways for the Cowboys to steal the spotlight from other sports or from other teams in his own sport, and I don't think it was a coincidence. The night that he blarts out, he's got no sense of urgency to get the CD-LAM contract done. That became the top story on a night that his arch rivals in the NFC East, the Giants were playing their preseason opener. His arch rivals in the AFC, the Patriots, and there's the whole Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones thing, they were opening their preseason that night. The Olympics were full speed, and here comes Jerry making that comment, and that's the top story, and I feel like, from his perspective, if you choose starter training camp to get CD done, or two weeks before the start of the regular season, he'll take that because he knows in the interim he can use that uncertainty, that drama, that possibility that it's going to last in the regular season to draw more attention to the Dallas Cowboys. It doesn't matter in his mind whether it's good for the team to get it done, it's good for the brand, it's good for the Cowboys. It's good for his broader objective to make them interesting. That's what drives the decision to defer it by a month. I really do think at some level he either thought of that consciously, or that's just the way he lives. It's like breathing to him. You don't even have to think about it. It makes you wonder sometimes, are they more popular, and is there more to talk about every year they fall short of a Super Bowl rather than setting your team up and going to win a Super Bowl? It's just if we do all these different things, no matter what, we make great money as the Cowboys organization, but to me at that point in time, and I think Jerry has even hit on it through the years of not really getting any younger, I want to win the Super Bowl, and I just feel like this back tracks your chance to win a Super Bowl. Everyone's talked about everything they haven't done this off season. They needed to do this. They needed to do that. I'm actually of the mindset of, you don't always need to make the moves in March and the time leading up that everybody thinks you should make to be competitive for a Super Bowl. They've had a good team over the last seven, eight years on and off, 13 win season, 12 win season. They've been right in the mix every year. They haven't finished, so this thought of we have to always do something in the off season. I know they've lost guys like Tyron Smith, that's a big part of it, but I think sometimes when you can have a quiet off season when it comes to acquisitions, you sometimes like the team comes back and they say, "Hey, this is what's here. Let's just work," but just put all the pieces together right away and let them go work. When you don't do that, I just feel like, like you said, it was almost like, "All right, we didn't do a lot. You're criticizing us for not doing anything. Hold on. I got some good news for you. We're going to slow down this CD lamp contract. We're going to do these different things. I'm going to have odd comments. Don't worry. We will be on the topics of every network to make sure they have something to talk about, but it's just not necessary. This team already has talent. They have players there. They're going to get talked about. We don't need the extra stuff. Everybody, I know a lot of Cowboys fans, you know a lot of Cowboys. They want a Super Bowl and it now feels like it's going to be even harder because CD lamp, I don't care how much he's been running and what he's been doing, it's going to take some time for him to just gather himself and be ready to go, but they're really going to need him at his best, week one. That's one of the things that Mike McCarthy, the head coach of the Cowboys addressed yesterday in a conference call with reporters. The athletes train at an unbelievable rate and discipline CD in particular. He loves to run. This guy, you have to cut him down at practice because he'll just keep going. I'm actually more focused on not doing too much with him. The overall conditioning, I don't think is going to be a concern. It's just really more of a connection. That little thing, the details, he just has to get back to running the routes and getting into the seven on sevens and team periods. He needs body on body contested catches. Have his contact balance tested. You really only get that playing football. I don't know what he was trying to do there, but I think it backfired because it just underscores the value of being there. You can run anywhere. You can work out as hard as you want on your own, but it's still not the same as being there. It's not the same as being around your teammates of developing those connections of understanding the little nuances of honing things. It's another year. It's another year. We're going to build on what we did last year. We're going to take what happened in 23 and incorporated in 24. You slow that entire process down and your body's not ready to be out there in space among the other bodies. I can run all day long, but that's very individual and lonely. When you're playing football, you're trying to configure yourself around everyone else and get back to that. Jerry was trying to downplay it a few weeks ago. All he throws with Dak and all these. Look, why even have training camp then if he doesn't need to be there? There's a reason for all those weeks of it, and when you have one of your best players not there, you put him and everyone else behind and you do it consciously because back to our point, they could have set the deadline the moment it was time to report for the flight to Oxnard for training camp. And Mike McCarthy, say he runs all day. We know that there's a time period where players train on their own. That's when they do all of that conditioning. So that's to be expected. CD Lam, I'm sure did all of the things he normally does. You saw, we saw him working out a little bit with Keon Coleman, the route running, like we know this guy's a professional because it shows up week by week when the regular season starts. We know he's putting in the work because the results are there. My whole thing is how about those small things in training camp when you first come back and you line up for one on ones and you've run routes on air all the time. You might have had different DBs in the off season, no pads on. You might have a little bit of contact there, but now you're in full pads. You're going against all your different corners, Trayvon Diggs, Bland. You're going against Jordan Lewis in the slot. You're seeing all different body types. You're doing this during training camp. All that is now gone. And then week one, you're going to start with Cleveland. You're going to get Emerson. You're going to get Newsom. You're going to see what happens with Denzel Ward. Those are three of the best corners in the NFL and it's been months since you've lined up right across from another guy and had contact. And that guy trying to jam you or CD who plays in the slot. You're running a route and one of these linebackers, they know you're a go-to guy. When we played in New England, we used to say, hey, you're in a slot. You're a linebacker. You're defensive end and you see a CD lamb. You see 88. Take a shot. You got to get your mind. It has to get back. You saw those things. So again, it just doesn't make much sense to say we're okay with him missing this because then like you said, like you would give any player, hey, take an extra two weeks off. Come back to training camp. What do you want? Because it's not that important. So I think for him, it's going to be some catch up, but I will say this as a professional, he's going to be ready to go and not the same situation quarterback or receiver. But when Brady got suspended for a month and he came back in 2016, he threw three touchdowns in the first game back in Cleveland. He was ready to go and he was also a guy that was sitting there shoulder pad helmet going and he was going through all the different things. He was finding ways to get as much like training camp and game looks that he could. And I think it's a little bit easier with Brady and his resources and what he can do. CD lamb, I'm sure was chasing that feeling of trying to get it, but I think it's going to take a while before he's the CD lamb that we saw last year. Well, and with Brady, it was an external reason for him not being there. So it's easy for him to be on board with the team. There's no acrimony. There's no wedge between him and the organization. When you have a holdout, it's a different vibe. Yeah. I want to do everything I can. I'm ready, but screw those guys. They're not paying me what I want. It's just like this conflict that you constantly have until it's resolved. And I'm sitting here trying to think Gary put a note in the document we used to communicate about whether or not there were any holdouts in New England, I probably not because they're afraid of Bill and Bill probably just cut him or trade him like, you know, we're not going to mess around with you. This is your contract. If you're going to hold out, we're going to offer you less. So was there a guy that I'm not thinking of that stayed away and had to reincorporate himself into the locker room and go through these things? CD Lam's going to have to go through. So when I first got there, Logan Mankins 2010, he sat out half the season and I was a rookie. He had franchise tag and he refused to sign it. Yes. Yep. So I didn't, I didn't know the impact of Logan Mankins. I got, I knew he was a good player when I got there. And then all of a sudden, he comes back and it was almost like you go to the playground and you get beat up and then you go back the next day with your big brother. We had like 10 fights the first day back in practice, and he was, he was the guy on the offensive line. So you could feel it, but other than that, we've always had the small things like a guy not show up to voluntary workouts. Like you don't, you don't have to show up to that stuff, but I remember my rookie year coming in and the rookies report earlier and I hadn't signed my contract by the time the rookies were reporting and I remember Bill calling me and saying, Hey, I just want you to know, once you start missing days that you're supposed to be there, this offer is not going to go up. It's going to start going down because history shows us when guys start missing training camp, injuries increase. And he even told me said Ben Watson came in as a rookie, he got hurt right away. He missed training camp days holding out. So this contract offer will start going down way before it starts going up. Once you start missing training camp days and I, I was a rookie. I was like, Hey, call my agent. We need to get this contract done right away so I can get the camp. I don't want to lose money, not being there. And then that was a good bell check impact. And I would say having Tom Brady there realizing you don't want to miss opportunity to win a Super Bowl. That's, I'm sitting here thinking about what it would be like to get that phone call from Bill Belichick and I feel my heart skipped a beat and I'm not the one that's ever had to deal with it. I can only imagine coming into the NFL and you're, you're already in kind of this uncertain spot when we get this deal done and the phone rings and it's Bill Belichick and he's landed on the line and it reminded me one of the best moves and I've never had an occasion to do it. And I don't know that I could pull it off, but a friend of mine was trying to sell a house once and he was haggling with the people that didn't want to pay the price that he had set and he told them, look, here's the price and it's going up a thousand dollars an hour until you take it and it worked after about three and a half hours and the price went up three grand for the house. But sometimes you, you make that right move at the right time and it works as you found out. You, and you got to know what you're working with. That's the whole thing. It's, it's the leverage part and I knew like once we went later down the line and I was a free agent and I got to legal tempering period. I remember getting not the same call of a similar call of like, hey, how are we going to get this done? Okay, give us, give us an hour or give us a day. I'm going to talk to Robert Pratt and we're going to figure and I was like, coach, I only got a couple hours. These other teams, they're waiting to see what I'm going to do. And I was like, this is a good feeling. And the last time we got on a phone call about a contract, it didn't go my way. But this time I got some leverage. I'll give you an hour coach and then I'm making a decision. And that's what it's all about. And you know, you get a little bit more comfortable on that side of the table, but you got it, you got to shoot your shot and know what you're worth. So hey, credit to your friend because I'm selling the house right now and I don't have to go. Do it. Do it. I don't. Do it. You know, we all find ourselves in situations where we can feel a little bit nervous sometimes from me standing in a studio. The lights get a little hot. The anxiety runs a little high as I wonder whether or not the words are going to come out of my mouth the way that they are supposed to. When you get in a situation like that, you worry about sweating. Here's one way to take that worry off the table. 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SiriusXM NFL Radio brings you down to the field for an all access pass to your favorite team. And the football fellas focus focus from the preseason right through Super Bowl 59. This is the national football league. This is professional football at its finest here every game on SiriusXM there's a story for every team on SiriusXM NFL Radio 1088 and on the all new SiriusXM app. You know, um, and we've heard these stories in the past too about owners like Jerry Jones. That's where it's come up in the past with like his ZQLA contract negotiations and DAC. He'll try to negotiate directly with the player. And that always makes me nervous because it's like, that's why I have an agent. Why are you putting me on the spot? Why are you pushing me like this? But some guys can get away with it. Who's going to tell Bill Belichick? You can't do it. I'm going to file a grievance with the union or whatever. He'll just roll his eyes and he'll get his payback some way somehow. If you make his life more difficult when he's just trying to get his team in place, trying to get these deals done now. And we, we mentioned this a little bit earlier, but we've got Michael Parsons and Dak Prescott who still need their contract. So one out of three good news is that one's done, bad news is the other two are left. Here's Michael Parsons from yesterday on CD lamb, getting his new contract. Congratulations to my man CD lamb, uh, man, couldn't be happier for the guy. One of the best dudes in the locker room, one of the best players on our team and to get the payday he got to take care of his family, I can be more happy for CD. So congratulations to my brother, CD lamb, uh, man, it's a dream to be watching you partner with you and soon up with you every week. So congratulations on your bread. You earned every dollar. Michael Parsons from his podcast with Bleacher Report and you know, let me stop there and ask you this because Malik Hooker, Cowboys safety, called out Micah for doing the podcast, you know, and you're not as focused as you need to be. You're not all in. And Micah says, Hey, it's my day off. I do other things on my day off and I'm still focused on football. Where do you come down on this idea that guys, like, is it a perception thing? Is it a reality thing? Is it okay? We see it's kind of the way things are now guys use their voices in different ways. There's so many ways I get to sit down, press a button at your house and you have a podcast. It does. I think it puts pressure on you towards the end of my career. My brother joins the team in 2018. We start our own podcast and we're in there once a week doing our podcast, either Monday night or Tuesday afternoon, but you do feel like, Hey, if I'm not delivering and being the player that I'm supposed to be on the field, this does look like a distraction. Even though, like Micah said, it's maybe an hour and a half, two hours out of your day, where you're looking at some notes and you're going on there and you're just being yourself talking on your podcast where some guys for an hour, hour and a half out, two hours out of their day, they're doing something that they want to do on that off day anyway. But I think with Micah Parsons, just look at his play. He comes, he delivers. He shows up for his team. He's a player he's supposed to be. And I would say now being out of football, every guy should, at some point in that off day or their free time, you should start to do things that you think you might want to do when football's over. Because when I decided to retire for two months, I was just sitting there like, what am I going to do now? Waking up, taking my kids to school, coming back home, just sitting in the house so guys need to be very proactive and doing things, not just thinking of ideas, but doing things. So I cried at Micah Parsons for doing that because he's just slowly building like we saw with Jason Kelsey, comes off the field, jumps right into another job, has a already successful podcast. You don't have to wait and see. So I understand Malik Hooker, hey, I'm trying to get this team the best I can and maybe, maybe he's shaved 30 minutes off of what Micah Parsons might have been doing for his podcast that he devoted to Cowboys now. Maybe that's the difference in how they win the Super Bowl. I don't know. But I love seeing guys I think it should happen behind closed doors of saying, hey, I'm on this team. I'm going to challenge you. Hey, are you doing what's needed for this team to be successful? Shouldn't be through a podcast and publicly, but I don't mind that at all. I think that should be the case. We have a good football team and you trust each other. Guy should be able to question things. Just I think you should do it in a better way. I think you make a great point. And this applies in any setting when you have a team of individuals who present themselves to the world. When you start fighting publicly, that's a sign of dysfunction and that's not good for anybody. And it only makes for harder feelings, bigger issues, and it eventually lays the foundation for some sort of an eruption, which from our perspective as we cover these things is good. From their perspective, it's not good, handle it privately and discreetly. And you know, whatever happened this offseason, Michael Parsons realized he needs to do more to be a leader. So something caused that switch to flip for him to develop and mature and grow, but he can still do his podcast and take care of business and also be a great leader for the Dallas Cowboys. He was talking about the CD contract. We haven't even talked about the numbers yet. And the numbers are the numbers. The reality is the Justin Jefferson deal set the bar at $35 million per year in new money average. At some point, not that long ago, and I think it was Clarence Hill, formerly the Fort Worth Star Telegram now with all Dallas, I think he said that the Cowboys were at 33, Lamb was at 35. This isn't hard to figure out at that point. 34 is the magic number. It's just a question of when both sides are going to go to 34 because if you go to 34 to early, you're splitting the difference between 34 and 33 or 34 and 35, let's just split the difference between 35 and 33. And that's what they did. And the numbers aren't official yet. I think I know what they'll be. I've picked up some details about what they'll be once this thing's signed. It's a real 34 million new money average. You had 17.991 million left this year. It becomes a five year contract. Four years added, five years under contract, Cowboys like to usually do five years minimum. Dak, they did a four year deal and it was a new deal because his pride when it expired. But the Cowboys go into it one five. They get four, add the one that was already there, 34 million per year in new money. It's real. It's not phony. There's not some big number on the back end that's going to blow it up and make it unrealistic like Tyree killed Devontay Adams. It's a real 34 million. If anything, the numbers that are there in the back end, I think are probably at a level where as the cap keeps going up, the market keeps going up. If he's still playing at a high level, he's not going to be happy come year four or five. And I always think that's interesting because I think you do the best job of saying, hey, we understand this is the new money. This is the reality of the player's contract because I've always looked at that. Like, I know I never signed an extension, but whenever a guy was signing an extension, I'd be like, well, what is the deal? What is the average per year ranked? What everybody else's contract when you put in all the years of the contract? And I know no one looks at contracts like that now anymore, but I think it helps because like you said, at some point in time, this contract becomes it doesn't work for either side. Either you make too much money at the end of the contract and the team feels like it doesn't work, or you're still playing at a high level. And as a player, you feel like, hey, I'm not making what I'm worth. So I think that is a point that everyone should pay attention to because when it happens, when it happens and the player's not happy, the fan says, hey, they gave you your money, you should just show up because you got all your money in the beginning. And then when the team does it, it's just like, it's just time, like that player's not the same. So I think it is very important to discuss that because I know for me, when I was a player, I wanted to look at that. I wanted to say, all right, when I'm 32 years old, what is my number going to be? Where do we think the projection of this cap is going to be, am I going to still be at a high number, or is this going to be a low number? Because I want to know realistically, I might not want to be a free agent at 32, 33 years old. I'm looking for security at that time. So credit to CD Landman, I think players are realizing that especially the closer you get towards the end of your contract and you have now some leverage of, hey, I'm not signing a phony deal just to get the next three years covered. And now we're right back in the same position, but I have less leverage because I have two years left on a deal and you have everything. Now I'm going basically year by year, which we watched some guys do give you a little bit of money this year. We're right back in the same problem next year. So your one injury or one best season away from that being it. So I think players always have to look at the totality of the contract and every small detail, because it's important of you want to look ahead and say, where am I going to be in year four, year five, year six, and what age am I going to be in? Am I going to be able to still be and compete at the same level? And you make a great point. It's something that Chris Sims and I raised not that long ago, but I want to emphasize it again. I'm going to be more blunt than you were. You were diplomatic. The reality is the fans line up behind the teams. They root for the laundry. They always side with the billionaires over the millionaires and 100,000 heirs because it's not like everybody walking around on NFL locker room is worth seven figures. They're getting paid, but the minimum now is still south of a million and taxes take a big chunk out of it. I saw some stuff on social media yesterday, one of the aggregator accounts, all the money that comes out where you just realize in that that's the way it's always been. Yeah, news flash, you pay taxes. What a shock. The government takes half your money. Did you just wake up to that reality? But regardless, with these contracts, the team can get out of it anytime the team wants. The only way you prevent that is if you structure it in a way that creates a salary cap hit that is too significant or there's guaranteed money that they'd have to pay. So we got to pay the guy anyway. We may as well keep him on the team. So it's not a real bilateral commitment. The team has a point where it can rip up the contract. It's got an escape hatch. It can get out of it. And the players just stuck. The player can't do anything other than hold out, take advantage of the other levers available under the CBA and there aren't many, but the player is stuck and the team isn't. How's that fair? Just it's fundamentally unfair on the surface. One side can rip it up in a walk away and the other side just has to sit and wait. And you've side a contract on your contract. Well, they don't have to honor the contract. Why do I have to honor the contract? That's a fundamental discrepancy that never gets mentioned that I wish fans would at least pay attention to. Maybe they wouldn't be so quick to rush in line behind the team and behind the laundry and behind the billionaire. If they understood, the players are kind of screwed here from the get go. And that's why I never have a problem. And you're going to hear some people say, Brandon, I should be in training camp. He signed a contract, blah, blah, no, like if you have leverage as a player and you have no problem holding in holding out whatever you want to call it, do it because there's going to be a good chance that when you are more mature or you realize and you're like, hey, I really want to do it now, it's going to be too late. You're not going to have the same kind of leverage. I have no problem with Matthew Judon, what he did in New England saying, hey, I want I want a new contract. I want more money because you don't always have the opportunity and you better believe I don't care how much a team loves you if they're done and they think you can't help them anymore. They have no problem moving on. You heard one of the best guys that ever do a Bill Belichick yesterday talked about how you navigate and figure out your 53-man roster at Cutdown. And they talked about for a veteran, your contract's fully guaranteed if you're on the opening day, week one roster. So if you have a guy and you have a veteran on a team, but you have some young guys who you think at some point in the season will be good enough to play over that veteran, you try to figure out, can I release that veteran and bring him back on the practice squad? And he didn't leave and go to another team to get that fully guaranteed contract. And obviously, it's great thinking from a team aspect, but as a player, that's what you're battling. That's what you're thinking about all the time and I remember in New England, we had that. We released Brandon Bolden. The thought was to bring him back after week one. Miami calls and I say, hey, we're willing to give you whatever the contract was and it'll be fully guaranteed for the season. He took off to Miami. And those are the things that you have to think about, I think fans sometimes say, well, good for him. He got his money. But I'd also meant him, his three kids, his wife, they had to pick up and leave a place that they thought they were going to be towards the end of training camp now and move to Miami. You have to do all of those new things and no one should feel sorry for you that you're going to do that. Hey, it's a part of work. A lot of people have to move for work, but you shouldn't hate a player for then leaving or a player for saying, hey, I'm not going to play until you give me the contract that I feel I deserve because that's your right to do it. And if you can do it, go ahead and do it. Every player can't do it. When you're only making $700, $800,000, you can't hold out the team to say, hey, do whatever you got to do. You'll be gone. But the guys that can do it, do it. And I think that helps build for every generation after. And this is one of the consequences of having free agency. The salary cap system incentivizes teams to go to players who have non-guaranteed salaries. When you get out to those years in the contract where the team can rip it up, that's when. And I don't know that it's good for the NFL to have Bill Belichick explaining this stuff so bluntly. I mean, I've been saying the same stuff for 24 years, but they don't listen to me. They'll listen to Bill because it contributes to this idea that all the players are just interchangeable parts in a big football machine. At some point, you're going to rip a part out and you're going to throw it away and you're going to jam another part in that's younger and cheaper and this is better for the overall machine. Sorry for the part that we had to rip out and throw away, but we got a better part in there. So they go to guys and this is the time of year they do it. They go to them because they know they don't have any options now. All the money's been spent. All the rosters are set right before. And if you have four years or more of service, you're a vested veteran. Oh, that's great. No, it's not. They can come to you and they can say, Hey, your salary is going to be fully guaranteed as a practical matter. If we have you on the week one roster, so here's what we're willing to pay you less than what we're due to pay you either take it or you get the hell out of here and good luck finding another job this close to the start of the season. And I hate that. And one of the things that you can do, if you're a player, make sure when you do your contract, tell your agent, put something in there that forces them to basically pooper get off the pot in March. Don't let them screw around with me in late August, force them, make the salary guaranteed that year. Give me a $5 million roster bonus and a lot of the contracts have that. That's how you avoid this because I can imagine just a feeling in your stomach as August is getting deeper and deeper and closer to September. When's the day that they're going to want to see me and make me an offer? They know I can't refuse. It's so interesting you say that my brother played eight years in Tennessee and going into his last year in Tennessee was making $7 million and our agent reached out to the team. Hey, we know Jason's at $7 million and, you know, again, it sounds crazy the way the cap moves $7 million for a corner. Now you're like, hey, we'll take that any day. But they were like, no, we want Jason here. He's going to be here. Free agency starts. They sign Logan Ryan. They tell Logan Ryan. The plan is to pair you two guys up there, play together. So now we're about a week away from the draft where now teams are all locked in on the draft and they come to my brother and they go, hey, you know, you're probably going to be our fifth corner. We're going to move down our fifth corner. We want to take you from making $7 million to like $1,7, $1,5 and you're going to have to fight to make the team and quite naturally it comes out. Jason McCordy refuses pay cut, tight his release them. But the truth of the matter is the Titans released them. No player is going to take a play cut and you basically tell me right to my face, you're going to cut me later and I'm not going to make the team. So you fast forward his next contract when he signs in New England after getting traded there from Cleveland, even in Cleveland, every contract in March on a certain date, he made sure he had some bonus in there, $500,000, whatever it was, not a crazy amount of money. But at least if you decide later in the season or before the season starts that you want to release me, I at least got $500,000 or whatever that number is that you get as a parting gift that you have some pressure to make a decision because again, when you're a veteran, especially you sign that second deal, you're not thinking about you being 29, 30, 31, 32 and the difference to team views you and how easily they'll walk away. So you're right, every player should think of something in that contract that says, hey, by this day of the new league year or whatever day you have to either pay me this money or you need to release me and let me go and allow me to hit free agency when everybody else is in free agency and teams want to actually spend some money. Yeah, it's the squeaky wheel dynamic. Your contract in and of itself becomes a squeaky wheel that needs to be addressed. We need to make a conscious decision about this guy because you know, they're mapping out their calendar, what decisions do we have to make? Oh, we got a $500,000 or a $5 million or a $2 million roster bonus that's due for this player. We got to decide is he part of this is he not part of this and we got to plan accordingly. That's why it's valuable to have that in there. Now, speaking of squeaky wheels, we got two left in Dallas and one is in squeaking. That's what's amazing to be about Michael Parsons for as well versus he seems to be in the business of football and he's willing to say what he believes. He's just kind of accepted his spot and he plays a position that has a little bit of injury risk. I mean, it's got a little bit of like you could have an injury that you're not the same guy after you have that injury and I don't want to be accused of jinxing him. He knows the position he plays. He should. I thought he should have held out Devin from the get go. I thought he should have drawn the line in the sand. I'm not putting foot one, I'm not putting a toenail on the practice field until I get my contract. So you've got his situation where he seemed to be willing to wait a year. You got Dak with this gigantic cap number that's not going anywhere. There's a huge cap number next year, even if he's not there, he's got a ton of leverage. Who goes next if anyone? I think there's a chance that that's all they're going to do. That CD lambs it and they'll worry about everything else after the season. It seems like that. I think to most NFL standards, you say this is simple, right? We have a Dak Prescott, a quarterback that is a good player. He's led our team. You can't win without a good quarterback in this league. We go do Dak Prescott, he has cap issues and everything for our team. And you would think we do Dak Prescott, opens up so much cap space, we easily go do Micah Parsons. But I think what we've come to assume and expect from the Cowboys, I agree with you. They don't do anything. They let this play out and then we sit here in the off season and now, instead of us talking about whatever team wins the Super Bowl, maybe Kansas City goes three feet or we get a Detroit Lions Super Bowl, we will fast forward right away to what will the Cowboys do next. Dak Prescott contract is going to be up. They're going to still have the hit from the dead money and all of that. Micah Parsons is still going to be sitting there. And this will be the main topic all off season where you're like, but wouldn't you want to just set your team up for success going forward? But instead, it seems like we're going to talk because if I'm Dak Prescott at some point, there's nothing that you're going to do. If I have to, if I go and take a snap week one, I would tell them we're not talking. So the only way my agent would ever call me during the season is if he's calling to say, Hey, dad, they just hit historic numbers on this contract. We have to listen to it now. That's the only way that I would even pick up my phone. And Dak Prescott has exactly the kind of leverage over Jerry Jones that Jerry Jones has taken full advantage of in every business situation his entire life and Dak should not take his foot off of Jerry Jones throat because he has an unfettered unimpeded path to free agency next year. They can't do a damn thing about it. He goes out there. Even if it's just, I'll go into the negotiating window and let's see what else is out there. You don't want to pay me 60. Oh, here's somebody who wants to pay me 70. We don't know. We know this. After every year, we've seen more veteran quarterback movement in the off season the past four years than we ever had before teams are willing to part with the bird in the hand at the quarterback position. If they just want to get better, we want to get better. This quarterback isn't getting it done and we can go get a Kirk cousins. We can go get a Tom Brady when he jumped from New England to Tampa Bay. There are options out there for us to try to address the position and the market keeps going up. The cap keeps going up. The numbers are going to go up at the quarterback position and that's the risk the Cowboys run. What I smiled, as you were saying at Devin, because it fits exactly with Jerry Jones agenda. Let's say the Chiefs win three Super Bowls in a row. They should be the toast of all of sports. They should be all anyone is talking about, but we're all going to be talking about Dak, Dak, Dak, as soon as the confetti falls in New Orleans, regardless of who wins a Super Bowl. Kind of genius though, right? You understand from a business model, maybe we don't, maybe we don't have the team to win the Super Bowl. We're not doing that, but how can we stay relevant and the Cowboys, you can never not. They have been relevant my whole life. When I was a young kid, they want a Super Bowl. They haven't won a Super Bowl since, but you've never seen a season where they weren't the main topic. My older brother is a die heart Cowboys fan. He will come up to my game. We have a 1 p.m. game. They also have the Sunday night game. He was cheering harder and going crazy at my house for the Cowboys than he was probably in the stands during our game, because he's a die heart Cowboys fan. And then back to Dak, you look at some of the success, Brady leaves and goes to Tampa. The Rams give everything away to get Matt Stafford. These guys go win Super Bowls. We're going to all watch to see what Kirk Cousins does in Atlanta this year. But if you're a team who you're sitting there like, our team's really good. We just need the quarterback. Why wouldn't you bring Dak Prescott in? Why wouldn't you want him in there leading your team? So I agree with you. He gets afraid of you. This number is going to be ridiculous of what he gets on the open market. The Cowboys, and this is my current favorite NFL stat, because you mentioned they want a Super Bowl when you were young and haven't been back. The first 30 Super Bowls, Devin, they played in the game to get to the Super Bowl 16 out of 30 times. More than half the times they were in that game. It was the NFL championship at first. It was the NFC championship after the merger. 28 Super Bowls since they haven't even played in the game to get to the Super Bowl a single time. And yet there's still America's team. There's still the team that every network wants to have whenever they can get the Cowboys on their air. And that Sunday ticket trial that happened back in June, I read most of the transcript. I read Jerry Jones testimony. It's clear from Jerry Jones testimony. This is what he lives for. The conflict, the drama and all of the exposure and interest that comes from it, not the winning in the losing. It's paying attention to my team, pay attention to me, pay attention to us. And they've managed to be one of the most popular teams in all sports, even though they don't have the results for three decades. So yeah, they'll embrace the DAC drama and the Michael Parsons drama because that's going to guarantee that people pay attention regardless of what they do. They could go five and 12 this year. And that's still going to be something that draws a ton of attention and dollars in a roundabout way that makes you more money by having all that extra attention. I'm interested to see how that stacks up to what we just watched in New England for all of that time. The dominance they had, the Super Bowls, and they all, they had stories too that came out of it, but they tried their hardest to always take away bringing the story on to yourself, contract disputes, all that stuff. They fought their butts to not have that. I'm interested to see now going forward, do they still get the same attention right now? There is no prompt. They have one Thursday night game. And that's it for the Patriots this year as they're struggling to kind of rebuild and bring back. Whereas like you said, we look at the Cowboys, even at years where you're like, this team's not going to be pretty good. I'm sure they had primetime games where there was Sunday night, Monday night. It was at least going to be the Sunday 4.30 window, like they were always going to have that. So I'm very interested to see, do you take the dramatic approach of always creating something or do you say, you know what, just win. Let's just keep winning. And as long as we win, our franchise will always be talked about, we'll always be there. I'm interested to see the balance of, doesn't the way we get back to winning and then bring all that back. And when I was there, we had five or six primetime games every single year. You knew it was coming up. So it's a great case study of two guys who are really, you know, the face up ownership in the NFL with Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft of figuring out what's the best approach. I know one's walking around with six Super Bowl rings, I'm sure Robert Kraft probably likes to remind Jerry real quick of, Hey, you had it early. But when this thing got more competitive and more teams, I've been here, you know, six Super Bowl since 2000. So I can't wait to just watch how that unfolds going forward. I think as a no brainer, I think for any team, other than the Cowboys, if you're not winning championships, you're not honing in on their profile. And that to me is far more impressive than winning a Super Bowl, keeping your team at the top of the list as it relates to relevance and desirability and ratings. And you've done nothing in the grand scheme of things to merit that kind of attention. Now it's not like they're, they've been like the Raiders the last two decades where they just can't get out of their own way. But it's an established brand that harkens back to the 70s and they've had that fan base and they've had that base of people that hate them too. And that's what makes them who they are. There's one last item we need to get to. And this one from my perspective is simple. How does CD Lam's contract affect Brandon Ayuk, who's holding in and waiting for his deal, Jamar Chase, who's kind of holding in, but the hold in ended over the weekend because he started practicing, his deal is presumably coming. I think it doesn't affect either of them because he didn't set a new bar. The bar is still the bar. I think the expectations are the same. I don't think anything about CD Lam's contract drives a number up. It might strengthen their resolve, but I don't think it changes the numbers for anybody. Yeah, I don't need that. I think Jamar Chase, if he gets another year and sits in and he doesn't pay him, if I'm Jamar Chase, my number needs to be above everybody else's. If I'm him, that's the mindset I'm going to have. But I think at this point for a deal to get done for like a Brandon Ayuk, I don't see the 49ers saying we're going above Jefferson. Now, I think the thing I'll be interesting is where does a 49ers think Brandon Ayuk fits in with now CD Lam, and is it important enough to draw a line in the sand and say you have to be under CD Lam? And I think I wonder for Brandon Ayuk and these guys, like you sit out for this long and I know Chase went back, is it important for you to say I'm only under Justin Jefferson? Even though these things change in a few months anyway, I think that's now the small minute thing that we have to figure out of who decides to draw that line in the sand and it says I need to be above or does the team say you need to be under? I think Justin Jefferson is the guy that I think for teams, as long as you're under Justin Jefferson, I think they feel comfortable. But I just wonder if players are like, I'm okay being under CD Lam or I need to be above CD Lam for these two guys. The one argument that I think it'll strengthen for Brandon Ayuk relates to his targets. He had 181 Ayuk had 105 and he still had nearly 1400 receiving yards. He was second in the league and yards per target. So he made the most out of every ball that was thrown his way and I don't know that that extrapolates to him having 2500 yards if he would have 180 targets. But he's a guy who I think has a feeling of untapped potential. But we were talking about this a little bit over the weekend. This idea that the 49ers know him better than anyone and something is holding them back. But you got all these other teams that don't know him at all, they're throwing all his money at him, that the 49ers aren't willing to spend. There's a disconnect there that just makes you wonder. I don't think he's playing for 14.1 million this year. They got to do something. But there's something weird there where these teams that don't know him are willing to pay him a lot more than the team that does know him. And I wouldn't even take it another step further. How much does he really want to leave? Like as a player, if you're unhappy with your contract, it's really hard to tell your team, hey, there's two places I want to go. Like when you do that, the team loses all leverage in any other negotiations. And just being up there and being around the wingman, the feeling I got was they went all in. Like they wanted to get this deal done. They had the trade ready, the only thing left was a negotiated deal with Brandon IU. And the feeling that I got from talking to those guys was, Brandon IU wasn't interested. And I know for like the fan base and the wingman in that area, they always blame, they blame the crab root for not wanting to give more money. That didn't seem like the case. The money seemed like it was there. But it was IU basically sitting there saying like, hey, I'm pretty good where I'm at. Like I had less targets than other guys, but we have so many different weapons that when I get the ball in my hands, I can get more yards. I have more one-on-one opportunities. I only want to leave if I get to go play with my buddy, Jayden Daniels, or I get to go to Pittsburgh from what I heard, where it's like, all right, both of those teams say, hey, we don't want to pay the guy that amount of money. So we're out, then I think he's cool with being there. And it seems like now it's one of those terms that's going to get us there. But as a player, when you don't want to be somewhere, you usually want to be where the guy with the check is standing there saying, here's the money that we're willing to pay you. It's big money. Because it seems he would have been second behind Justin Jefferson before the CDLAM contract got signed. So I think he's very, he wants to be there kind of. He kind of wants to leave, but he only wants to leave for the perfect situation as we spoke about earlier, players in the league don't usually get that kind of opportunity to be exactly where they want to be. Hey, Devon, it's getting to be too late to go to another team and have any impact whatsoever. To have a plug and play guy at the receiver position and turn things around and get yourself in a position where you're making the most out of your targets, you new coach, new playbook, new everything. And we're less than two weeks away from the start of the season. I think for both the 49ers and for the Bengals, it's a question of when do we make our last move? And it's going to be between now and I'd say Monday. You make your last move and they either take it or they don't. And there's a good chance both guys do unless Chase decides I'll kick the can for a year, but he's only making 4.8 million this year. That's the problem. But I think there's a chance both guys are going to be done by the time we head to Kansas City. And as it relates to Iuch, maybe he just watched some of the film of Jacobi Percet and Drake May. Maybe that's why I didn't want to go to New England. That leads to our next topic. We're going to take a break. When we return, who's going to be under center for the New England Patriots when the regular season starts in just 12 days? Gerard Mayo is confusing us his former teammate hopefully will help us make sense of it next here on PFT Live. Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called literally the Rob Lowe. And basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. Their new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe please and listen wherever you get your podcasts. [ Silence ]