As the 2024-25 NFL season prepares for kickoff, Dak Prescott is still in contract negotiations with the Dallas Cowboys. Reports from Pro Football Talk suggest that the star quarterback could be on the verge of signing a new deal worth over $55.1 million per year, surpassing the current highest-paid quarterbacks in the league, including Jordan Love, Joe Burrow, and Trevor Lawrence. The delay in finalizing Prescott’s contract may be due to the Cowboys’ interest in Shedeur Sanders, the college quarterback from the Colorado Buffaloes.
If Dallas doesn’t get this deal done, this will be Prescott’s last season playing for the Cowboys, and according to NFL draft analyst Jordan Reid, Shedeur could be on the Dallas Cowboys’ radar.
Reid reported that an anonymous area scout said the Cowboys could benefit from having Shedeur under center for numerous reasons.
“With the Dak contract mess happening and struggling to pay their other stars, you better believe that [owner and general manager] Jerry [Jones] has it in the back of his mind what the benefits of a young and cheap QB could be for that team if they crash and burn again in the playoffs. Imagine a home-state kid whose dad not only played for your franchise but was a highly successful player, and Shedeur is the type of player that’d embrace the star on the side of his helmet.”
Remember the last time a member of the Sanders family played for the Cowboys? They won a championship in 1995 when Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion, Shedeur’s father, played as a cornerback for the Cowboys.
Now, there is a possibility that Shedeur can do the same. As a high schooler, Shedeur played quarterback at Trinity Christian-Cedar Hill, located just south of Dallas, where he was a three-star prospect and one of the top Texas quarterbacks in the class of 2021.
After graduating, he went on to play at Jackson State University, an HBCU in the South Western Athletic Conference, where he played outstanding. In his first year, he won the Jerry Rice Award the Jerry Rice Award as the best freshman in the FCS in 2021. He combined for 6,963 passing yards, 70 touchdown passes and 14 interceptions from 2021 to 2022 before following his father to Colorado.
Sanders’ phenomenal play translated to the FBS level last season. In year one, he completed 69.3 of his passes with 3,230 passing yards, 27 touchdown passes and only three interceptions. Despite his stellar play, the 6′ 2″ 216 pound quarterback got sacked the most at the FBS level, which most likely played a huge factor in the Buffaloes finishing the season 4-8 after starting 3-0.
Now entering his second year of FBS football, the 22-year-old has garnered a lot of attention. He’s projected to be in the running for the Heisman trophy and to go top 2 in the 2025 NFL draft. ESPN’s Matt Miller mock draft has Georgia’s Carson Beck will be the No.1 overall pick to the New York Giants, Colorado’s Shedeur is projected to go No. 2 with the Las Vegas Raiders trading up to grab him. Texas’ Quinn Ewers lands at No. 10 overall to the New Orleans Saints.
“[Shedeur] Sanders is a legitimate Heisman contender, if Colorado can string together some wins,” Miller wrote. “His accuracy, toughness and poise would make him a rookie starter for the Raiders and give the offense some much-needed swagger. He threw 27 touchdown passes to three interceptions for the Buffaloes last year.”
Even though the Cowboys are eyeing the Buff’s signal-caller, a few things must happen if they want to land him. For one, they must let Prescott play out his contract. Although the two parties are in contract disputes, Cowboys Executive Vice President Stephen Jones told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Clarence E. Hill Jr. that contract talks with Prescott and his representatives have been “upbeat.”
“Right now, I would characterize both conversations as upbeat,” Stephen Jones said. “We’re having good talks back and forth with both Todd [France] and Tory [Dandy]. I like where we stand.”
What Jones said may be true, however, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio said that something is preventing the deal, and it’s on Dallas’ side of the bargain.
“One sticking point in the Dak deal [we’re told] relates to the team’s escape hatch,” Florio wrote. “How many years will they be tied to Prescott in the event he regresses or they otherwise decide to make a change? … While the number the Cowboys want isn’t clear, they could be looking for a two- or three-year exit opportunity. Dak, whose current four-year deal created a very real four-year commitment, wants security if he’s going to stay.”
During the last NFL season, Prescott had a standout performance, completing the best regular season of his career. He ranked sixth in the NFL with an average of 7.7 yards per attempt and threw for 4,516 yards on 590 pass attempts. Additionally, he ranked eighth in the NFL with an average of 34.7 passing attempts per game and fourth in the league with 24.1 completions per game. Prescott completed 410 out of 590 passes, finishing first in the NFL with 2,553 air yards on completed passes. Furthermore, he was the runner-up in the NFL MVP voting and earned a spot on the second-team All-Pro in 2023.
With all the success the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback had last season, he still came up short in the playoffs. Last year, they suffered a humiliating 48-32 first-round playoff loss to the youngest team in the NFL, the Green Bay Packers. That’s probably why the Dallas organization is hesitant to give Prescott a big contract. Also, the Cowboys still need to sign their star wide-out CeDe Lamb and their defensive star Micah Parsons. But if the Cowboys want Shedeur next year, they’ll be better off tanking and not even making the playoffs, or pull off a blockbuster trade come draft night that’ll put them in a better position to land the next-generation Sanders. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next in this Cowboy drama. Until then, to be continued.
