INDIANAPOLIS — In Jerry Jones' 42-minute meeting with the media on Friday evening at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, the discussion around a possible contract extension for Dak Prescott loomed arguably the largest.
The two sides remain without a deal ahead of free agency opening on March 13 and Prescott's cap hit set to have the club take on $59.4 million in the final year of his deal in 2024. An extension could help the club extend that money out over the course of future seasons and allow for more flexibility in free agency this offseason.
While it seems dire for the team to create cap space in order for Jones to follow through on his "all-in" offseason approach, he said the team can still have that approach without an extension for Prescott.
"We don't need to, but we can if everybody wants to solve it," Jones said. "You can get in and get on the same page and see if you can come to an agreement. If you can't, what we have in place works. And so obviously, if you do it one way, you'll be working through some of the other areas on the team in a different way, but you can't really plan on that until you see when you're there."
"Absolutely," he said when directly asked if he can be all-in without an extension. "You just have to adjust where you're going and how you're going all-in."
While that could strike fear in some Dak Prescott supporters that there is a scenario where he is not the quarterback past 2024, Jones was confident in saying that Prescott remains in the team's long-term future plans.
"No, I don't fear that," he said. "Every player you got has some time when his contract is up. You would walk around with the shakes if you feared it. You can't because they all come up. They all can get hurt. They all can lose some talent, so all of that is not fear."
Jones has been complimentary this offseason on the on-field product that the Cowboys received from Prescott in 2023 – a banner year for the franchise's starting quarterback that yielded a career-high second-place finish in MVP voting. For that reason and the relationship the two sides have, Jones expounded on the confidence he has in Prescott even more on Friday while also mentioning there is still another level of his game waiting to be unlocked.
"He had one of the best years as you all know," Jones said. "But the thing that I would point out is we all think that had a lot to do with the fact that Mike McCarthy is right there involved in Dak's play, more directly involved in the offense, that we think that there's a lot more to come."
"So we'll see, we're going to be working on his contract as we get into the future. What we do there or don't do, I couldn't say at this time but the main thing is he's going to be our quarterback."
The decision on an extension doesn't have a timeline either, in Jones' eyes.
"Don't need to [know], we can go another way right now," he said. "But we really want to sit down and discuss it and see how we go."
