On Friday, defensive end Demarcus Lawrence and the Cowboys agreed to a five-year deal worth $105MM, making the defensive lineman one of the highest-paid defenders in the league. 
That deal will include plenty in guaranteed money, according to The MMQB’s Albert Breer (Twitter link). Breer broke the deal down like this:
- 2019: $25MM to sign, $4.6MM roster bonus due on May 1, and $1.5MM base salary.
- 2020: $16.9MM base that is fully guaranteed.
- 2021: $17MM base with an injury guarantee that converts to a full guarantee in March 2020.
- 2022: $19MM base salary.
- 2023: $21MM base salary.
That’s $48MM fully guaranteed, but it is practically $65MM as the team would have to cut him after just one season to avoid paying that extra $17MM. It was reported recently Lawrence was seeking $22.5MM annually, and while he didn’t get that figure, he got close, with an average annual value of $21MM.
The Cowboys reportedly offered Lawrence an AAV of $17MM at the NFL Combine, which his camp countered with at least $20MM, The Athletic’s Calvin Watkins writes. Following the owners meeting, the Cowboys increased their offered to $20MM, but Lawrence’s agent, David Canter, pushed for $22.5MM. Dallas also reportedly originally offered Lawrence a six-year deal, but moved it down to five before the sides agreed on a price tag.
Now that he has signed his deal, Lawrence will undergo surgery to repair a torn labrum. That procedure will take place on Wednesday, which will prevent complete dislocation, Ed Werder tweets. If dislocation happened, Lawrence would be looking at an IR stay, Werder hears.
With the new deal, the Cowboys gained an extra $10MM in cap space, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Clarence Hill tweets. Now that Lawrence’s deal is out of the way, the Cowboys are eyeing new contracts for several players, including Dak Prescott.
In Watkins’ piece, he notes the Cowboys are monitoring talks between Seattle and Russell Wilson before engaging with Prescott about a new deal. Regardless how that deal unfolds, Prescott is a near lock to sign a $100MM-plus contract with Dallas sometime soon.
I genuinely hope they give Dak 100M plus so we have another reason to laugh at them. What has he done to deserve that kind of money? He hands Zeke the ball… that’s it. Dak adds absolutely nothing to the offense, they could run no QB and still win the same amount of games.
wait there waiting for the russell deal for what reason? dak is now just as good as wilson? what a joke! he cant hit an open receiver if he was given 5 tries… he is never going to be wilson nor win a superbowl…he is an above average qb at best that fumbles the ball more than any other qb in the league…
I’m not gonna go so far as to say Dak’s as good as Wilson, but in perfect fairness, most of the things said in this post and the parent ones were equally true of Wilson after three seasons. He was coming off consecutive years leading the league in fumbles, everyone said he was just a product of Lynch and the Legion of Boom, there were all the stats about Wilson’s record in games where he had to score 24+ points to win, his career high for yards/game was 217 (25 less per game than the season Dak’s coming off of).
Dak is tied with Brady for the most regular season wins the past 3 seasons. Rarely throws interceptions and has 66.7% completion percetage with a higher yards per attempt than Carson Wentz. He’s a 2 time ProBowler and Offensive Rookie of the Year award winner. He also has the most rushing tds for quarterbacks over the past 3 seasons. Your comment is full of ignorance if you believe he adds nothing to this offense especially after what he did after they acquired Cooper. Does he deserve to get paid like a top 5 qb, no but he’s worth more than 100 million.
What a dumb comment.
Dak is terrible but they have never finished below .500 with him. So put Blaine Gabbert at QB and they still win games. Jokes. Everyone here knows how terrible your posts are. You have 4 people today alone calling you out haha
$100M is nothing special at QB. Andy Dalton and Alex Smith are essentially on $100M deals. Nick Foles just signed to $88M.
And in 8 months, they’ll re-do the contract to get out of the 2020 hit and call it a bonus. Salary cap my behind.
All that does is push some of the responsibility to a future year. So in the end, the charge still hits their cap. At some point, that cap charge will come back to bite them. Since the NFL is basically the only league where contracts are not fully guaranteed you’re going to see those types of reworks.
They always say that. However, When was NO hit with that cap hit against Brees? They’ve been kicking his contract down the future for at least 5 years now.
And it hasn’t been worth it for the Saints?
Plenty of other guys just get cut before that last season, such as Andrew Sendejo. His deal ended up being a steal for the Vikings, three years for just over $10.3 million, when the almost universal reaction when they re-signed him to a 4-year, $16 million deal was that they’d gotten fleeced.
So now players can insist on the big contract before it’s even determined whether their surgery has been a success or not? Just one more reason for the owners to push for a lockout if the CBA doesn’t resolve this issue in their favor.
They could have let him walk. Jerry tagged him.
Yeah, my heart bleeds for the owners.
There is plenty of greed among both owners and players but if a lockout occurs it will be the fans (as usual) that get hosed.
I’m just not sure how good this team will be. I like Dak but will he ever be a consistent deep threat.