We are approaching the end of the Oxnard portion of Dallas Cowboys training camp and so far things have remained as they were when it began as far as CeeDee Lamb is concerned.
On the eve of the club’s second preseason game the Cowboys have yet to take care of their WR1 by way of a contract extension. For what it’s worth, Dak Prescott and Micah Parsons both also remain without extensions and are eligible to receive them.
Much has been made about Lamb’s situation thanks to Jerry Jones’ public comments about last week regarding urgency (both the original comment and then the one where he walked the original back). Other wide receivers around the NFL like San Francisco’s Brandon Aiyuk and Cincinnati’s Ja’Marr Chase are both seeking new deals from their teams as well, but unlike Lamb they have reported to their respective training camps.
Whether or not an end to all of this truly is on the horizon remains to be seen. But Friday we got a report from The Dallas Morning News that included some actual numbers. According to the DMN, the Cowboys are offering Lamb south of $33M per year.
The Cowboys are offering the receiver slightly under $33 million per season, a person with knowledge of the talks told The Dallas Morning News.
What Lamb is looking for isn’t known.
The figure of nearly $33 million per season would give him the second-highest average salary for a wide receiver in the NFL behind the Vikings’ Justin Jefferson ($35 million). It also pushes Lamb past the Eagles A.J. Brown ($32 million per season).
In June, Jefferson signed the largest contract for a non-quarterback: a four-year, $140 million deal with $110 million guaranteed.
Lamb isn’t seeking the largest contract for a non-quarterback.
Cowboys’ executive vice president Stephen Jones said that’s what Lamb wanted at the team’s introductory news conference on July 27 but, according to Jones, Lamb reached out and said that’s not the case.
It is interesting how it is specifically noted in here that Stephen Jones made a public declaration about something that Lamb wanted and that he had to reach out to say this was not the case. Was that an honest mistake by Stephen? Posturing through the media? We obviously do not know, but it hardly seems like a good idea to publicly mislead people about something like this if it really was intentional. For the record we do not know if it was or wasn’t.
Could this really be a big thing being made about a difference in $2M per year with regards to what Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson is making? Surely that is not the case. If it were that would be such a trivial matter and it would stand to reason that it would not be worth Lamb missing all of this time, but perhaps the Cowboys are worried not so much about the difference in dollars but the precedent of setting the market at a position. History would suggest the latter is certainly not impossible.
This has been a thing for the Cowboys for well over a year now, at the very least over the entire time since the last time we saw this team play a serious football game in their Wild Card playoff loss.
The clock continues to tick.
