The Ringer NFL Show - What Does Dak Prescott’s Contract Mean for the NFL?

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

Kevin Clark, Nora Princiotti, and Danny Heifetz react to the Dak Prescott contract saga ending to the tune of four years and $160 million. They discuss some of the contract's intricacies, how it might affect future franchise QB contracts, and more. Hosts: Kevin Clark, Nora Princiotti, and Danny Heifetz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike and Jesse talk about sports at the sports cards market and how to make money with this hobby on sports cards nonsense. They'll let you know who you should be buying and selling and give you the occasional fantasy football advice. Check out sports cards nonsense on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Runner NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network, Emergency Dak Prescott Extension Edition. Noah Princezi is here. Danny Hyfitts is here. You know it's special because Kyle is engineering and producing it. That's how you know it's big time. Nora, what's going on?

not much, just going between a lot of Taylor Swift talk and the Dallas Cowboys who are kind of making sense. So it's 2007 in my brain. Two very famous things. Two things that we generally like here at the Ringer, Taylor Swift and Dak Prescott, two very talented things. We will end that particular comparison right now. But we will say that the Dallas Cowboys ended our national nightmare. We have talked. talked about this contract specifically for over three years. It ends tonight. Four years, $160 million. Danny Heifitz, your first thought upon hearing this extension. It came down while my wife and I were having birthday dinner for her. It joins the Andrew Luck retirement dinner that my wife might also had as far as interrupting a good time. Yep. And, but anyway, when you first heard this extension news, Danny, you thought what? One day before the franchise tag deadline.

I thought, eh, it's like welcoming. I'm not overwhelmed or not underwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. We've known this was coming. And it, yeah. Okay, so, were you overwhelmed by the numbers, or were you overwhelmed by the fact that it happened? Because I thought it was absolutely in play

that there'd be a tag again. It'd be $38 million, and we could just see this roll over. Now, there's a couple of provisions here that are really important. Number one, is that, first of all, it was $126 million guaranteed, which is, I believe, $14 million more than Deshaun Watson, who got a similar deal last year. The other part of it is it's four years, which is short.

The Cowboys wanted to get five, but since that was last year, they effectively got five years of control. But there's a no trade clause and a no tag clause. And the no tag clause is super important because the whole thing with Jack Prescott betting on yourself is that he wants to reach actual free agency, absolute free agency like Kirk Cousins did three years ago. And he's going to do that unless the Cowboys

making him an insane offer three years from now, which, by the way, will happen when there's 100% increase in the TV deals. Nora, what do we think? Can I just make an attempt to properly whelm Danny Hyfitz here? Yeah, I'm surprised by Danny's take here. Well me. Yeah, I am too. I want to, I want to up the wellm factor. All right. So, Doc Prescott, he's going to be 28 in July. When this deal is up, effectively up, there are two void years. We don't need to think about them. It's a four-year deal. He will be 31 years old. He's making $40 million, a, year an annual value on this deal. He and Patrick Mahomes are the

two quarterbacks who are in the 40s. Mahomes is 45. When DAC hits free agency, Mahomes will have eight years left on his deal. There's a solid likelihood that Dak Prescott could out earn Patrick Mahomes over the course of his career. Does that

properly whome you? No, honestly. What's going on with heist in this pie? Here's the thing. He's like so blind. He's like nothing phases me. Nothing matters. We're all just dust in the wind. So here's the thing. The franchise tag for DAC was $38 million. So if he did nothing, he didn't come to the negotiations. He didn't log on his Zoom. He was going to get $38 million. So I understand it's a big number, 160 over four. But 38 million annually was the floor in these

negotiations. It was not going to ever get below 38. So if, you've been paying attention to the franchise tag, which is like the least interesting thing you can pay attention to. I understand why you could get the push notification. It's four years, $40 million annually. It seems like a lot. But if you've been following the franchise tag, it was always going to be like $155 million-ish over about four years. So the number itself wasn't exactly surprising. I think it's crazy, as you said, that he's getting way more money than Mahomes in the first three years, way more money than a lot of quarterbacks. But that's just the nature if the Cowboys kind of bungled this whole negotiation.

And it's kind of like, my honest thought when I first saw this was, you know, like when a TV show has its finale and you forgot it was on the air? And you're like, oh, I guess that that's over. I didn't even know it was still. That's kind of how I felt. It's just, all right, I guess this is over now. I kind of forgot about it. Yes and no.

Living and dying by every Dak Prescott like contract up and down for the last three years. Like, I've been watching this show is how I feel. Maybe that's why I feel properly. I'm crazy. It's like he's not going to leave. They're not going to get away from the zombies. He was never going to leave the Cowboys. So you thought there was no chance

Jack Prescott was going to find free agency just wait this whole thing out. I guess not this year. I mean, I don't think any, maybe next year. He couldn't have. You couldn't have. Right. But I'm just saying,

I thought there was at least a slim chance, a slim chance that they would, Dak would just keep betting on himself, as we talked about, play out the $38 million. By the way, the cap hit, this year is $22 million.

As our buddy David Hellman pointed out, Carson Wentz is counting more against the Eagles cap this year than Dak Prescott will count against the Cowboys hat cap. That's amazing. It's probably a lesson in that. But I thought that there was overwhelming. I thought that there was some sliver of a chance that the Cowboys would bungle this and the Dak Prescott would be playing somewhere else

in two years or whatever it was. I really do think that the allure of the open market was something that appealed to him. And so I guess that we come from this from different sides, Danny, because you think that there was, there was no chance he was ever going to be anything but a Dallas cowboy. Well, the injury also, the injury was a wrench of this. So, I mean, obviously the ankle injury was awful. And so I guess I shouldn't be so blaze, as Thor would say.

Well, I don't know. I didn't think he was going to leave. Jerry kept saying he was going to be a cowboy and I believe Jerry. I don't know. It was so this, okay, this gets at what my question was going to be. what Dallas Cowboys organization have you been watching do business over the last however many years?

Like you didn't think they were capable of some crazy shit? That was what, beyond the number and beyond just going, okay, big picture, Dak really bet on himself here and did well doing that. My other big takeaway was,

you know what? Maybe Dak got what he wanted out of that a little bit more than the Cowboys got exactly what they wanted in terms of the structure. of the contract in five years versus four and whatever. But the Cowboys just did a thing that makes a lot of rational sense with and not. If you consider the past three years, we had to go however many rounds with this.

But right now, the Cowboys just did a thing that makes a lot of rational sense without a lot of fanfare or back and forth, which feels like a breakthrough. Like someone there is drinking water and getting rest and making smart. decisions for their lives, and I commend them for it. Yes. And I want to talk briefly about one thing I've heard going around the past couple of days. And I think the Dak Prescott discourse has gotten a little bit off track. And there's this whole thing of you don't pay Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes money for Dak Prescott because he's not on that level. We're going to debate that in a second. But I also, I just want to say

that's not the conversation. The conversation is leverage. And he was going to be paid like that because he'd gotten himself in a position to be paid like that. If he kept playing on the tag, he would, A, make that much money. He would make around $48 million, $40 million because it's 38 this year. And then beyond that, once he obviously gets closer and closer for agency, that's the number he's going off of. And so it doesn't matter. It's a trivia question, basically, or a debate question, but whether or not he's as good as Deshaun Watson or Patrick Mahomes, he's going to be paid like it because he positioned himself like that. And so I thought the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of people saying, oh, the to just go to the draft or let it ride or trade him or whatever.

Maybe, but I just, I think that's a huge risk. And I think that that's the cost of doing business right now. And we've seen that a million times. I mean, remember that summer where Derek Carr and Matthew Stafford and whomever, three quarterbacks who were paid who immediately became the highest paid quarterback in football? That's how this works. Don't ever try to make sense of this. Don't ever try to make sense of it.

It doesn't, there's, there's no law that says the best quarterback is to be the highest paid quarterback. And what we're seeing now, actually, when you look at it, whether that's Patrick Holmes, Deshaun Watson, and now Dak Prescott, and then I believe the fourth highest paid by annual average annual value is Russell Wilson. It's actually a pretty reflective list because those are some really good quarterbacks. That hasn't happened a lot of the time that the four top quarterbacks by money in this league are paid, are paid the most. That doesn't happen a lot. And so actually we're in a pretty good place as far as that goes. Nor? Take it away from just the salary and consider widening the frame of what the Cowboys

have gone through in their history with their quarterbacks, right? Yeah. So between Akeman and Romo, they're grasping at straws. They're trying to figure stuff out. Romo is undrafted. And then they get to DAC, who's a fourth round pick. So what does that tell you? That tells you that there's a lot of randomness.

associated with finding these guys. And it also tells you that you can have these periods where you're really struggling to find the guy. And if I phoned into Jerry Jones's yacht and said, hey buddy, 40 million bucks, you don't have to do that again. I'm pretty sure I know what he would say. Sign me up.

What would he say? I think he would say sign me up, let's go. And I cannot do the accent. I'm not going to keep talking about Taylor, but we had an experience where I attempted a Southern accent on the first pod, and I was told expressly never to do that again. So I'm not going to do it. But I think that is a pretty clear decision.

Now, that's framing it without all the, well, we can just go year to year. We can tag. We can do the injury. And that's when I think sometimes teams make bad decisions. But here they didn't let any of that get in the way of making a good one, which even if it's a little, like, this contract is more what DAC would have wanted if he'd drawn up dream deal than what the Cowboys would have, right? And there's an important point on that that I want us to make really clear,

which is that so he can't, he, he's not going to play on the franchise tag, but technically he's going to be tagged as a formality, which means that he will be unable to be tagged because of the no tag clause at the end of this. deal, but going forward, because they will have put the tag on him, any subsequent tag after the end of that deal that has the no tag clause, he would have to be paid 44% more of his previous annual salary. So it's not just that he can't be tagged at the end of this deal. It's that practically speaking, it's going to be really hard to put the franchise tag on Dak Prescott for any team ever again. We know that because of the Drew Brie situation, because San Diego has.

had tagged him and then Drew Brees and his contract led to the craziest cap situation in the history of football. It still remains to this day with our good friends in New Orleans Saints. Danny Hyphins, let's talk about the Cowboys from a team-building perspective. So, again, the $22 million cap number for this year is manageable. It's nice. It's as much or slightly a little bit higher than Amar Kouper is making. Ezekiel Elliott, I think is at 13. this year. I don't have it in front of me.

This is a team with a lot of highly paid players, but it's a team that on paper has a lot of talent. And there's huge questions about the defense, but we know the weapons. Zeke Elliott is not one of those weapons. I'm sorry to say. But Cooper, C.D. Lamb, Michael Gallup, you know, the offensive line will be healthier than it was last year. Dak Prescott on this team, settled in, knowing what we know now about what he'll be paid and sort of how that all works. You think what about the Cowboys in 2020? I mean, they better have to win the Super Bowl in the next two or three years. I think that's why they sign this contract.

No, not like they're going to, but that's what this is for, right? I got you. Like, Nora, I mean, I guess, but I don't. Shoo in. What's, what's going to happen if they don't? Well, so here's a lot of highly paid quarterbacks. Go ahead. So Jerry Jones two combines ago said that this was, and I'm like paraphrasing, but he said,

this is my 30th combine and I don't have 30 more. all I want at this point in my life is a Super Bowl, other than the health of the people I love, I'd want a Super Bowl more than I want another billion dollars. I think that this is why he signed DAC, and I do think it's not just the $40 million. I think he signed DAC because he really genuinely believes this is a Super Bowl core,

and that he doesn't have time to find some quarterback in the draft with a top 10 pick or trade up and hope that it's the right quarterback. As Nora said, they believe in DAC. He's been saying the whole time they're going to extend DAC, And so he brought Dak back because he really believes in his core. But to your point, Kevin, I think that there's real concerns because this is like a top heavy roster.

They've got this offensive line, which is kind of getting creaky. Zach Martin, Tyrant Smith are older. Lyle Collins is really good, but, you know, hip injury in mid-20s isn't awesome. And then the defense is pretty barren. It's pretty crazy how a lot of this team has thinned out. And in a lot of ways, it's the inverse of what Dak came in with. He came in with elite offensive line and terrible skill players. and that we've got great skill players

and a declining offensive line and then the defense is kind of non-existent. So, you know, you're going to have issues. Like they might have to replace Chidobie Ouzi at cornerback. Like they've got Stefan Dix's brother at cornerback,

but they just need secondary help, which isn't great in the modern NFL. They don't really have a great pass rush even though they paid to Marcus Lawrence. That's not awesome. They have a lot of holes to fill. They have a terrible defense. They have a terrible defense.

And I'm withholding judgment whether or not Dan Quinn, the defensive coordinator can solve that. Mike Nolan. is as bad as it gets. Mike McCarthy, just in general, I don't think it's particularly good coach. I had high hopes for them last year,

and as soon as I saw them play, I didn't have high hopes for them, which is kind of a bad sign. I'm going to ask you both very quickly. And Cowboys fans didn't either. A lot of fans will, like, defend their team and be like, you don't know what you're talking about this team. Cowboys fans were very quick to be like,

this team doesn't have it. Okay, so let me ask you both very quick before we get delved into other things. The ceiling or the, let's say the best result over the next four years of this context, for the Cowboys is what? Like, give me the year and give me the round of the playoffs they get to over the next four years. I'll start

with you, Nora Principiaotti. Two years from now, NFC championship game. Danny Heifitz. Lose the NFC championship game to the Packers, and then Mike McCarthy's fired. Is that happening this year? Yeah. Okay.

Or maybe two years. I just think that's the funniest outcome. Do you both think that the Cowboys are the best team in the division this year, Nora? I hate that division. It's so weird. I hate that division, too. Is that the best quarter?

Danny, you've got them losing the championship game to Aaron Rogers. Oh, you said the ceiling. You got the football team ranked above them? Okay. You said it's the ceiling. No, I just give me what happens the next four years. Okay.

Wait, so let's go back to the division thing. Can I answer that more clearly, though? Can I answer that more clearly? We all hate the NFC East. Yes, go ahead. I hate the NFC East, but yes, I think. I think, oh, God, I'm going to regret this. Yeah, with a healthy DAC all year, yes,

I think they are the most trustworthy team in the division for next year. If I knew Washington's quarterback situation, then maybe it would be different. But yes, I think that's right. I just think that we had the most knowns about them. Well, yeah, but they have the quarterback and they have the ability to have a really good passing offense,

which is still if you can only have one thing and you don't want to just have one thing, but if you can only have one thing, that's what you want. I think Washington wins the division this year because that defensive line is unbelievable, even if they get rid of Ryan Carrigan. You've got four first rounders.

It's like the San Francisco 49ers from a couple years ago. Obviously, Kyle Shannon's not the head coach, but I really believe in the talent that Washington has collected. I think even with Taylor Heineke, maybe they go 10 and 6, but any quarterback upgrade, they're odd. auto favorite. The Cowboys,

Dak was on the pace to like shatter Peytonning's single season passing yardage records before he got hurt. I mean by like a thousand yards. And the crazy thing is they were still losing. And I think that there's a chance that Dak can put up these like Herculane passing yard records. But unless

the defense gets better, they don't actually have a chance to contend. And now they're paying a quarter of their budget. I mean, well, I guess 22 million, but on average, you know, we'll see if they can actually build a contender, but they have a lot of holes. No, I will say $22 million as the cap starts to spike, that is affordable.

And that is well within the range of a team that can actually end up spending what is, just from a team-blowing standpoint, what is pretty reasonable for a quote-unquote big money quarterback, especially when, and we'll get into this in a second, the other quarterbacks come due. I love the theory, you know, it's all hypotheticals again, because we just don't know who's going to play quarterback in Washington. We don't know the situation in Philadelphia at all.

the Giants, Danny Hyphitz, can you give me any insight and whether or not the Giants are going to be good in 2021? They extended Jason Garrett. The Cowboys said, Mike McCarthy. I'm just going to say, Jason Garrett, Daniel Jones are returning. You make of that what you wish. All right. Dak Prescott.

So let's get into where Dak Prescott is in the hierarchy of quarterbacks. And, you know, I think that a lot of it has to do with, I don't want to do the tiers. debate right now. We can do that another day, but a lot of that has to do with how big the tier is. I don't think he's on the Watson Mahomes level, but I don't think he's that far off.

I think he is a top 10 quarterback who has a good case to be a top five quarterback on his best day. Nora, you rank Dak Prescott where on the hierarchy of NFL quarterbacks right now? He's second tier. He's not

Mahomes, Watson, Wilson Depending on the day Russell Wilson But I would still put him here Aaron Rogers But he's

He's in the next group So what you're saying is Josh Allen is also second tier Is what you're saying Because I didn't hear that name I hate what you're doing to me right now This is so mean I just didn't hear the name

I don't group Josh Allen With those four quarterbacks But I would put him in the next group I I generally agree with that Yes, I know. I know. I know.

I know. Okay. No. I was going to have a little, I'm going to ask Danny, and I was having fun because we're going to talk about Josh Allen and what he's worth in a second here. Danny, same question. Dak Prescott kind of in that six, seven, eighth best quarterbacking NFL tier for you as well. I think so. I mean, I think the tier, it's kind of like basketball, right?

I think Bill and his pot ranked the other day, guys who you want to have the ball with the last shot on the line, who's going to get a bucket. And I think the top tier of quarterbacks for, I mean, to grossly, oversimplify it is guys that if they need a touchdown to win the game you expect it to happen. Mahomes, Brady, it's Aaron Rogers like you think they're going to do it. And the next year is guys who

you believe can do it and like you've seen it but it's not like an uncertainty. So I think that Dak, we've seen Dak take over games and be elite but he's not, once you can do it, it's just a matter of how often you do and how consistent you are. So I don't think he's quite as consistent with the comeback as like

Deshawn is, but we've certainly seen him in prime time. I'm thinking of that Vikings games Sunday night football, I think from a year or two ago, which is just really impressive. So I think that it's around tennis. It's just a matter of how often you've hit the level. But he's at, he has show that he can be as good as anyone late in games. Yeah. Dak Prescott can make a team significantly better than it should be.

And that's the mark for me of a great quarterback. I think Dak Prescott is a great quarterback is that he can make a team better than the sum of its parts outside of the quarterback position. And that, there are like maybe seven guys who can do that. He's one of them. And so that's, that's a deck argument to me. 100% and that's why to me is worth $40 million. And that's why if you understand the realities of this whole thing,

this was always, this was inevitable. And I know, Danny, you were overwhelmed by this, but I was, I was surprised at the Cowboys a day before that they, they would have gone to the tag and all that stuff. You know, again, as a formality, they will tag him. But I was surprised that it got done with sort of a press release and it wasn't dramatic. That surprised me. And it's good business by the Cowboys,

good business by Dak Prescott. and in three, four years, Jack Brass South can make ungodly sums of money. Now, last thing, what does this mean for Lamar Jackson? What does this mean for Josh Allen? What does this mean for every quarterback going forward? There's a floor here. And I think that the big question over the past couple of months was,

is Mahomes an outlier? And obviously, no one's going to get $500 million, but is the fact that he's going to touch 50 or go over 50 and some of the years later in his contract, obviously, does that set a price point to where there's a kind of a rising tide lifts all boats things, where then all of a sudden, Watson makes a little more, all of a sudden Prescott makes a little more,

Josh Allen makes a little more, Lamar Jackson makes a little more. I think that we saw maybe that was true on the low end, where instead of making 39, you're making 40, maybe it had a $2 million difference, something like that. But obviously it's going to be a really, really long time until somebody makes 50. It might be until Dak Prescott reached.

which is for agency in four years. Nor, you've done a lot of reporting on Josh Allen. You know that franchise. Josh Allen, who is due for an extension, what happens? If the question is, does he get to 40 million a year? I don't think so. Because I think the context of the tag for DAC is essential. But I do think that we are going to be inching close to the age of the $40 million a year, you know, upper echelon, but not necessarily top, top, top, top, top, two or three quarterback. That how, it went from 30 to 40 so quickly. In a freaking.

Matt Ryan hit 30, like two and a half years ago. And I called. Remember when, who was it? It was Garoppolo and Derek Carr, who in pretty quick succession, and they were getting like, what, like 26.5, 26, 28, something like that. And it was like, whoa, there we go, some record-setting quarterback deals. That feels like it was freaking yesterday. Here are the quarterbacks who are making $25 million a year or more, okay?

Let's start at 25. Derek Carr, Matthew Stafford, Jimmy Garoppelow, Ryan Tannahill, Matt Ryan, Carson, Wenz, Kirk Cousins, Jared Gough. Okay, that's, we just went from 25 million to 33, okay? And now Gough, Gough and Rogers have the same exact average annual value. I just reading that sentence, just give me a migraine. And then above that is Wilson, Watson, Prescott, Mahomes. This, once you get under Rogers, that list is a nightmare.

I mean, you can argue individual, I mean, I think Stafford's a really good quarterback. I think that Matt Ryan can be a good quarterback. Tanna Hill's worth over $20 million, all that stuff. But I'm just saying, we're in agreement, nor do this is, again, it just makes no sense. But the fact that it went from 30, the threshold went from $30 million quarterbacks, existing to $40 million so quickly just speaks to how could this work can change, quite frankly.

And you know what? We should add as an add... We should just add as an addendum to that. This whole situation makes me feel like we're pretty close to getting some news about TV contracts, which, look, like, we kind of know the parameters of what we're going to get there, but we'll see...

We know that it's going to be a lot, but we're going to see a number pretty soon, I think, and it's going to contextualize what's going on with some of this and it's also going to contextualize some of the Cowboys decision making here. But Danny, I cut you off. What were you saying? You had a question. You know, no, I have a question for you, Kevin.

I mean, so on one hand, we're talking about age of the $40 million quarterback and how it just spiked from 30 million annually for quarterbacks to now we're at 40, you know, a few years could go to 50. And on the other hand, Peter Schrager went on Rusillo's podcast this week and said that the middle class of free agents are about to

or middle class of veterans are going to get a blood bath, our guys are going to get one-year deals, and there's going to be a real changing of, I mean, income, and there's going to be a real change in the income structure of the whole league and how players go. And so do you think that in some ways we're talking about money at the top, people in the middle and bottom getting screwed? It reminds me honestly of a year ago when unemployment was spiking

and then the stock market was at an all-time high. Is this just a mirror in the pandemic, the salary caps, just the delayed part of the economy from last year? Yeah, so my wife and I are going to New York and we're going to stay there for a little bit on Thursday and we're looking at real estate and I was I was reading an article the day about about what's come back and what hasn't and they were saying that the apartments that came back almost instantly were like the $20 million apartments of the $25, the stuff that we're looking for, the $20 to $25 million apartments. Age of the $20 million apartment. Yeah, no, but Kevin saved. Zillow listings. Yeah, just a bunch of just sort, sort from high to low and just let it rip. But I know, but I was reading that and basically I was, you, you're what you were saying to them.

Think about that where it's just like it does, at some point it just doesn't matter because it's, it's the cost of doing business and it's, it's people who, I mean, these teams are screwed without it. And so you can see, you can try and play hardball with Jack Prescott, but it doesn't matter. matter because the Cowboys have the money to spend. Dak Prescott knows you have the money to spend. And it doesn't, players are not going to take less. The Cowboys, a couple of years ago, did that weird thing. Bob Stern came on a couple of months ago and we talked about it on this podcast, where the Cowboys for like two days were like,

Dak, you know, you should take less because being the quarterback of the Cowboys comes with a lot of good endorsements. And it's like, well, cool. He can take the endorsements and he can also make $40 million on top of it. Like, what about that instead of taking $5 million less? And so I think that there's just, I don't know. I mean, this was, this was, if you're a Dak Prescott now or you're Josh Allen or you're Lamar Jackson, you are that top of the line big ticket. There's no, there's no discounts with those guys.

That's what I'm saying. There are no discounts with a top of the line quarterback right now. And it doesn't matter. And there will be no pay cuts. There will be no hometown discounts. Nothing matters except that. The price is the price for an elite quarterback. They deserve it.

Mahomes deserves it. Watson deserves it. All those guys deserve it. And it doesn't matter. You know, Carlos Dunlap got released today. Like, that sucks. But like the Carlos Dunlap negotiation for his next team has nothing to do with how they're going to pay the quarterback.

The quarterback price is separate from almost everything in football. Like I've heard sometimes, and this is just crazy. But, you know, sometimes GMs or whomever are, They'll just joke with me and say, like, the quarterback should have a separate salary cap. Like, we should just pay that. It's almost like this is not what they say, but the MLS has the Beckham rule where essentially there's a, I don't know what it is. There's three players, MLS people can let me know about this. There's three players, I think, who count outside the salary cap.

And, yeah, that's how they bring in, you know, your elite European kind of Frank Lampard, Pierlo, Stephen Gerard type players who've been through in the last decade. And it's like, I think sometimes GMs wish it was like that where you could just pay Matt Ryan $30 million and then, but then you could also give a bunch of money to your defensive line and your offensive line and team build that way because it sucks so much oxygen out of the room when you do have to pay that quarterback. But at the end of the day, you'd rather have that quarterback than not. Like not having a quarterback is what gets people fired. And so that's the there's no other position like that. And to Danny's point, the answer to your question is yes. It is squeezing the other players in the roster. because here's what's happening. Forking over $40 million in average annual value on a contract, that's fine. For a quarterback like Doc Prescott, that's genuinely fine. But within the current macroeconomics of the NFL,

and that's been exacerbated by the cap going down when everybody assumed it was going to go up, up, up because of the pandemic. But under the current structure, what happens is that the number is fine, but you do all sorts of things when you need to, like add the void years, to push everything into a window. and the window's getting shorter. And what's happening is that when you get to the end of it and all those bills are coming to that you've pushed off, off, off,

it's tanking is becoming a financial act less so than it is accruing draft picks. Because basically what's happening is that you're pushing all of that financial pain into short periods of time. and those short periods of time really stink for the Carlos Dunlapse of the world. And for that middle class,

because they're the ones that get let go and who, especially this year, have to fight it out when there's less money to go around, decide if, you know, maybe they were making $5 million a year before do they want to put their body through another NFL season if they're going to be making basically the veteran minimum, if that's all that's out there for them.

Or do they think differently about a long-term, deal versus a short-term deal, whatever. Those are the decisions that are being put on the sort of veteran middle class of the NFL while teams are extending themselves for quarterbacks, which they need to do, but fitting those under the salary cap by doing all of this maneuvering. So the answer to your question is yes, and it just has to do with how the salary cap hits are structured. It's not about paying DAC Prescott 40 million a year, but it's just about what you have to do

to make that work. I will say that the reason I'd answer Danny's question with the yes or no is because he asked me to compare it to COVID unemployment. It was just an incredible heat check by him. It's like everything else. The people at the top are doing great and that everyone below is kind of getting screwed. I think that's- I like Kevin just like sort of paint in watercolor over that and then was like, okay, now I can

talk that we've sort of cleared the space on that. Yeah, now we can talk. Now I can just do 20 minutes on COVID unemployment. We're like playing. It's hot potato. That's what this is about. We didn't, the only thing we,

we flipped at that we didn't talk about was Lamar Jackson's contract. Danny Hyfe, it's what happens next. Oh, you want to, I mean, do you want like my really boring answer?

I don't think that this, I don't think, incredibly bored by all quarterback contracts. So let's just keep that moving. No, not all. This one, because you said before,

it's inevitable. And I think that's what board. Yeah. I don't think this DAC contract has any bearing on any of the other deals. I think the last five, six deals that were signed did have an impact. I think this one is as close to irrelevant as a huge deal can be because the circumstances

are ludicrous in how separate this is from others. So, like, Lamar Jackson's not going to get franchise tagged. Dak Prescott, again, was going to get $38 million if he got the second tag and was going to get like $54 million if he got tagged a third time. The fact that that was even possible, this just reaffirms, like the Kirk Cousin situation, don't let your quarterback approach for agency. That's really stupid. And this is just a weird confluence of events

where it's like the Cowboys were both somehow let DAC approach it because they let this meander on, even though that they were, Jerry Jones was publicly saying Dak will be the quarterback and we will extend him. That's just probably not going to happen for other franchises. So all this, even Jerry Jones admitted publicly two months ago, Dak had all the leverage.

That's just not how these go. It's not how it's going to go with Lamar and Baltimore. It's not going to be how it's going to be how it's, goes with Josh Allen Buffalo. The teams have the leverage. The whole system is built so the teams have the leverage. The Cowboys, ironically, even though Jerry Jones is like the most powerful owner, somehow squandered the leverage. Unless that happens with someone else, I don't think that this situation is applicable to other ones. Kevin, we finally got Hyfitz worked up. We got it going. Now I'm overwhelmed. Yes. Now he's overwhelmed. You got properly overwhelmed. Danny Hypatts,

this was a joy. Pleasure. You got me. I got you. I got you. I got you. wound up. Norr Pinciotti. So Danny Hyphitz is going to have a column up about this. Is it already up, Danny? No, it'll be up. Hopefully. Have you written it? Yeah, the process. You know. I love it. Nora Prince,

Idi, we're going to be back on a pod later this week. You also have a little Taylor Swift project going on here. You want to talk people about that? It's called Every Single Album, Taylor Swift. It's the newest podcast from The Ringer. It is really a labor of love. between myself and ring and contributor Nathan Hubbard, who I actually don't know in real life. We've never met each other in person, but for the last year, we've sort of been texting each other about Taylor Swift nonstop.

And we've turned that into a podcast where we dissect every album of her career. And we dropped the first one late Sunday night, Monday morning, about her debut album. We're going to go Mondays and Thursday. up until April 9th, which is when she's expected to re-release the first of her old masters, which she's been undertaking the process of re-recording, which is a really cool intersection of music business, the business of the music industry, just musicality in general, and then a really interesting celebrity career. So it's going to be a super fun run. I've just absolutely loved working on it and still working on it. And it's on the ringer dish feed.

So people want to listen, go there. Hypatts is re-recording all his old Danesie podcasts. Yeah, we're recording. We are actually going to be on this feed on Friday with Danny Kelly for the Big Board. We're recording. That's correct. You're just going to be record whatever in Oregon. Warren Sharp's coming on this week, by the way.

Is he going to be more welled than I was? Warren Sharp is always pretty well. He's always well. He's always well. All right. Guys, he's been the Renfellonfell show. on the burger podcast now.