A report Thursday indicates the Cowboys and Dak Prescott’s representation have made progress toward a long-term contract for the quarterback. How much progress is the question.
Three days before the season opener, Prescott remains headed toward free agency in March.
“I’d say they’re working,” Prescott said of talks, via Schuyler Dixon of the Associated Press. “I don’t know if that’s necessarily the time line. I can’t say, ‘Hell, I’ll put a timeline to [vice president of football operations/football administration] Todd [Williams] and Stephen [Jones] if we don’t get this done, this or that, but I know they’re working.”
Prescott, though, makes clear that he’s working on getting ready for the Browns, not worrying about his contract. He said what happens on the football field is the “only thing that matters.”
“I’ve never played the game for [money],” Prescott said. “I play the game for the pure love, for the guys in that locker room. This game has always brought me something that not a lot of things in life do. That’s the type of peace it does, being out there between the lines with people you share a brotherhood with. There is something special about this game of football, and we’re just blessed that money comes with it, and I’m in the position I’m in that we can be having these conversations, but that doesn’t motivate me.”
Prescott had less to say about contract talks than last week when he said he didn’t care whether a deal got done before the opener, while indicating the start of the season was his deadline. Prescott also said last week he no longer listens to anything owner Jerry Jones tells the media.
“People change their feelings daily. Can’t say I have the same feelings I had last week,” Prescott said Thursday.
Prescott has leverage, with no-trade and no-tag clauses in the four-year, $160 million deal he signed in 2021. It’s his decision whether he enters free agency in 2025, regardless what the Cowboys offer, and it will take a record deal with much of it guaranteed to get him to sign now.