Business of Football: Dak Prescott's Injury Won't Significantly Hurt His Career Earnings
Much has been made of Dak Prescott's contract situation, before and after his injury in Week 5, but he will likely end up in the same position next February he'd be in anyway. Plus, the NFL playing through the pandemic and why Bill O'Brien was destined to fail.
ANDREW BRANDT3 HOURS AGO
In the aftermath of
Dak Prescott’s bone-chilling injury and reaction on Sunday, many have asked me about his business decision to turn down a multi-year offer from the Cowboys to instead play on a one-year contract with no security beyond it. Here are some thoughts.
We do not know what the Cowboys were offering, but we do know from their contract history that they prefer long deals—the longer the better—with guarantees only in the low-risk early years of the deal. They have previously signed star players to contracts with lengths up to 10 years, which are essentially one- or two-year contracts with team options following that. Amid that landscape, the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes
agreed to a 12-year deal, one that only secures $63 million over the next three years (Ryan Tannehill is making $91 million over the same time frame). Wanting both a better deal from the Cowboys and more optionality in his career, Prescott chose to play in 2020 on the one-year franchise tag number of $31 million.
Yes, if Prescott were never to play again or to find himself in a non-leveraged position next March and taking a below-market “prove it” contract, he would have been better off taking whatever the Cowboys offered last year, giving him more than the $31 million guarantee that he has. But ask yourself:
Is that really the most likely scenario here? It is not.
Much more likely is that this upcoming February we will be in the same place we were last February: with Prescott a pending free agent and the Cowboys having to 1) negotiate a long-term contract; 2) re-apply the franchise tag, or 3) set him free into a marketplace desperate for young and proven quarterbacks. And my sense is that, as long as his recovery and rehabilitation has gone well, Prescott will again be in a position to leverage, at the least, a franchise tag of around $38 million for the 2021 season.
Many players have returned from serious injuries in their contract years to earn top-of-market contracts in free agency. Allen Robinson (Bears) and Earl Thomas (Ravens) come immediately to mind. To think that Dak Prescott will now suffer in career earnings because of an early-season injury at age 25 is, well, knee-jerk.
The real business of football issue here is the franchise tag, a powerful management tool that is weaponized for situations just like this. Last year Prescott was the most underpaid player in the league, as a starting quarterback making $700,000. This year he finally made it to the promised land in sports business, free agency, only to be restricted to negotiating only with the. And the Cowboys used the leverage of the tag to not only take Prescott off of the market, but to be firm in negotiations, knowing they had his contract rights no matter what outcome.
Were there no NFL franchise tag, Prescott would have a long-term deal, and it would be the most player-friendly contract in NFL history. But his free agency was only a mirage. The tag is a massive advantage for management over their most important labor. Imagine the NBA with a franchise tag…
While his injury was gruesome and takes him off the field in 2020, I am still bullish on Prescott’s long-term earnings and still believe he has played the situation correctly. Time will tell, but to think Prescott will be limited to anything below elite quarterback earnings in the future is, in my opinion, narrow thinking.