Count Dak Prescott among the many people in Dallas who think the Cowboys should back up the Brinks truck and pay George Pickens his money. CeeDee Lamb already spoke earlier this week about his desire to see the Cowboys keep his running mate around over the long term, and on Thursday, it was Prescott's turn to advocate for the team to spend up and keep one of the league's best receiver duos intact.
"George, you know he loves football. And at the end of the day, it's not for the money," Prescott said during an appearance on Up & Adams. "However, he should get every dollar that he deserves because he's a hell of a player. And we should probably give it to him sooner than later because [the price] is only gonna go up."
Alas, the Cowboys actually cannot pay Pickens anytime soon. The deadline for franchise-tagged players to sign a long-term deal with their team passed back in July, and Pickens signed his franchise tag. He will play this season on a fully guaranteed, one-year, $27.3 million contract, and the Cowboys won't be able to give him a long-term deal until after the Super Bowl.
Prescott is correct, though, about the price only going up. The wide receiver market has exploded over the last few years, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba set a new high-water mark at the position with the four-year, $168.6 million contract extension he signed this offseason.
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If Pickens comes anywhere close to replicating what he did in Dallas last year, when he caught 93 passes for 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns and was named both a Pro-Bowler and Second Team All-Pro, he is going to get paid at or near the top of the market by somebody, whether it's the Cowboys or another team. That is going to happen. (Unless the Cowboys use the franchise tag on Pickens for a second time.)
As we wrote earlier this week, investing in both Lamb and Pickens on long-term deals wouldn't exactly be unheard of. The Bengals paid both Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, the Lions paid both Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams, the Dolphins paid both Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle before later moving on from both of them and the Eagles paid both A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith before trading Brown this offseason.
The difference, of course, is that the secondary receivers among those duos got paid quite a bit less than the No. 1s, whereas if Pickens has a season that's even close to representative of his talent, he might earn a contract that pays him even more than Lamb. Paying two wideouts at that level would be somewhat unprecedented -- and somewhat complicated for a team that is also paying Prescott, Tyler Smith and the recently-extended Quinnen Williams near the top of the market at their respective positions.
Still, the Cowboys can absolutely afford to do it if they want to. We've seen plenty of teams pay numerous players at or near the top of the market for their positions by massaging cap hits with bonuses and void years, kicking the can down the road on the cap.(The Eagles are experts at this, and the Lions will soon have to be as well, given how many players they have paid in recent years.) The salary cap can be manipulated in pretty much any way you want to do it in the short term, as long as you're willing to eat dead cap hits somewhere down the line.
Jerry Jones himself admitted that it's realistic for the Cowboys to pay Pickens. The only open questions here are whether Pickens will keep his head on straight and perform like he did last year, and whether the Cowboys will be willing to open the checkbook if and when he does.
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