I often agree with you but I don’t think the team got cheap with Dak. I think they offered him around R Wilson money but wanted the five years to give them flexibility with the cap. Dak was adamant on the four years and Stephen was adamant on the 5.
IMO, it isn’t fair to expect the team to give on their stance while expecting Dak/France not to.
I think that it was a combination of a few things that led us to this point: The franchise tag, the uncertainty of the financial outlook because of the pandemic and the all-new coaching staff.
With the franchise tag, Dak’s services were guaranteed in Dallas, no matter what.
From Stephen’s perspective, Dak was going to be his QB in 2020, no matter what... which is the big thing and it removed any real sense of urgency that the team might feel. It did take away some cap room this season - all $31M had to hit this year - but it isn’t that different from what he’d be paying on a long term deal (LTD). Plus, the actual amount Dak is going to play for (31) is below the yearly average of what Dak would make on a LTD.
The financial outlook and what the league (and salary cap) will do was (I’m sure) always in the back of Stephen’s mind. I simply think that this kept Stephen from going any higher on his offer to Dak. He wasn’t, IMO, going to let the money creep up from what was already a crazy high figure (R Wilson) when he doesn’t know if the salary cap will flatten or even recede from its current figure. Particularly when Dak was making the team fight for flexibility in structure, along with the dollar figure.
It would have been reckless to do so, and frankly as much as I do like Dak, I’m glad that Stephen drew a line and didn’t cross it. I support that because as a fan of the team, I don’t want the cap to be too stressed to pay some of the other good players that they’ll need to.
Then, throw in that there is the inherent uncertainty of Dak having never played for McCarthy and in his system and you have a unique situation where the team felt like it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to let Dak play a year on the franchise tag. Let the league figure out where it will be financially before next season and have a year with Dak playing under MM to see what you’re getting there.
It makes perfect sense to me and really, I don’t understand why some are so upset by it. Yes, the contract will likely cost more next year but to have certainty on the cap and Dak’s play under McCarthy would be well worth it to the team.
Like I said above, the one thing that would have galvanized the team into getting a LTD done would have been if they could have lost his services this season... and absent that, there was too much upside with just waiting to next season to get the LTD done.
As for Dak, his perspective is simple: He will make $31 million this season, which is infinitely more than he made last season. Plus, he knows that he has great weapons in Dallas and will be playing under a coach that is somewhat of a passing game guru (and under Moore), so he expects to have a good enough season to up his pay after waiting a year. Not to mention that he knows more pressure will be on Dallas in a year because of the franchise tag being so high to do it again.
Making more this year than he’s ever made in his life and with the ability to pick right back up with the negotiations after the season made enough sense to him that he didn’t feel compelled to sign a deal now that isn’t 100% what he wanted.
So, I get both sides and why they decided to just wait until the off season to pick it up again.
I don’t think either side is really upset about waiting until after the season. There were simply too many reasons on each side to wait. No real reason to push hard and concede a lot on what they wanted. I think everybody is fine just waiting. Well, everyone except some of the fans.
