The countdown to Dallas Cowboys training camp is on, and so is the race to get receiver CeeDee Lamb’s contract extension done.
DALLAS – Tick tock. Tick tock. The clock is ticking louder and louder every day as the countdown to Dallas Cowboys training camp is on. The Cowboys report to training camp in Oxnard, California on July 24, and they are hoping that All-Pro receiver CeeDee Lamb will be joining them.
And our Mike Fisher – with 35 years on the Cowboys beat – is offering up three reasons why he believes it’ll get done in time.
While Lamb has openly committed to not showing up until his extension is in place, the Cowboys are hoping they can get this resolved and move forward.
And that’s Reason No. 1: Signing Lamb to an extension has always been the plan. There is nothing – not with the cap, not with the rising costs and not with anything at all Lamb has done wrong – to alter that original plan.
Reason No. 2: COO Stephen Jones has said the start of camp is a loose “deadline.” He didn’t need to state that; it doesn’t need to be that. But that means a landmark is in the head of the Joneses.
And as Jerry Jones first told Fisher way back in the spring of 1990, in a declaration that has become a Cowboys mantra: “Mr. Mike, Deadlines Make Deals.”
Reason No. 3: Contrary to popular belief, a Lamb extension will not “cost the cap” (not now, anyway). Dallas will actually gain $10 million of room if the deal – even one in excess of $32 million APY – is constructed in the way the team intends.
So there are literal cap-related benefits to doing Lamb at everyone’s earliest convenience.
There are observers who are still arguing about “leverage.” ESPN’s Dan Graziano is among them.
“I still believe the Cowboys will get Lamb signed to an extension in time for camp,” he writes. “And even if they don’t, they’d have the option of using the franchise tag on him in 2025 … That gives them some leverage in the current negotiations.”
That is indeed true. But that would force Lamb to play this year at $17.8 million and in 2025 at about $24.7 million.
That’s about $42 million for two years of Lamb … instead of the approximately, say, $67 million that his performance and the market merits.
The Cowboys, under this plan, would a) get destroyed in the court of public opinion for being unfair and b) would be playing hardball with a superstar in a manner in which they rarely do.
The easier solution is right there in front of both parties. … for three reasons – including “Deadlines make deals.”