EAGLEMANIACAL.com

WITH the stroke of a pen, QB Carson Wentz and the Philadelphia Eagles Front Office, wrecked the future for QB Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys. Not that anyone will notice in 2019, but by this time next year, it will be impossible to ignore.

Yesterday Wentz inked a 128M$, 4 year extension (32 per year), on his current deal. He was already playing on the last year of his rookie deal, which pays him 720K$, then there’s the 5^th year option of 22M$. This new deal doesn’t really kick in against the cap until 2021.

22M for a starting QB is bargain in 2019, and will seem a bigger bargain in 2020. By 2021, even 32 may not seem so high. Especially with a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and a higher salary cap likely in place at that point.

There was no 5^th year option to take for Prescott, so after the 2M he earns in 2019, he’d be an unrestricted Free Agent in 2020. Since Dallas will lock him up before then, his new deal will kick in….. somewhere around this time next year. That’s with just one routine, annual adjustment of the salary cap, and before any new CBA is in place.

More than that, what Wentz’s deal does, is it sets the bar for Prescott’s asking price. As Cowboy fans are fond of pointing out, since both QB’s came into the league in 2016, Prescott has started all 48 games (Wentz 40). He’s won more games (Prescott 32, Wentz 23), for a higher win percentage (.666 to .575) and has a started 3 playoff games (1 – 2), to Wentz’s zero.

So it only stands to reason that Prescott’s agent should ask for a bigger bag than the one that Wentz secured. With Seattle’s Russell Wilson setting the bar at 35M, Prescott is looking ask for the 34M that Ben Roethlisberger commands, or the 33M that Aaron Rodgers commands.

Prescott will want Super Bowl ring money, despite two bare hands. What’s sad for Dallas, is that had they offered him 27, 28, or 29 last year, he’d have likely snapped it up in a flash. Now with a floor of 33M, he’ll be AT LEAST 4M$ per year more expensive.

Had they gotten Prescott for 27 per year, they might have saved 6M$ per year. That money would have gone a long way to re-signing their own free agents, or helping to court additions.

Our Front Office signing Wentz now, the way that they did, forces the Cowboys into a phone booth. They have little room to maneuver and a number of key contracts (Ezekiel Elliott, Amari Cooper, La’el Collins, Byron Jones, Robert Quinn, Anthony Brown, Maliek Collins, Chidobe Awuzie, Jourdan Lewis and Xavier Woods) coming up in the next two seasons. (That isn’t all the key contracts, just most of them.)

Essentially the Eagles put the Cowboys in a “win now” mode despite the Cowboys not possessing the ability to achieve such a goal, nor the stability to build towards it quickly. The Cowboys won the NFC East crown in 2018. Don’t expect to see that happen again anytime soon.

And all this, with the stroke of a pen.