I don't think it matters all that much. You pay the going rate whenever you do it because the cap continues to go up. Dallas didn't sign Dak to a contract in 2020 because he wanted a shorter deal than the team wanted. The franchise tag essentially gave them an extra year. If we had signed him in 2020, then we probably would already have redone or be redoing his deal this year and be paying the roughly $45 million per season mentioned in the article because the "big" year of the deal would be this year.
The biggest benefit to signing him to a four-year deal in 2020 would have been not having to pay $31 million. His first year of his new four-year deal was $17.2 million, his second $19.7 and this year is $26.8. Note that none of those is $40 million per year. Yes, that's why a big chunk is due next year for all the money that gets pushed to the back end of a deal. And that's why you redo the deal next year if he's playing well. Then you go back to paying $20 million per year for the first three years before you finally have to take the big hit (which will be absorbed by other contracts and the likelihood that the next quarterback will be on a rookie deal).
I don't know if I would mess with the deal further this year because I don't know if the team gets much of a benefit out of it. Dak's base is $1.7 million this year, so it's not like you can reduce it to create more money to roll over into next year. Of course, we do have $20 million in cap space right now, so they could decide it's better to use some of that to start an extension now.
