Jerry Jones on why he delayed CeeDee Lamb extension: 'I don't see any rewards'

The CeeDee Lamb deal got done and the wide receiver will play Week 1 against Cleveland. But the process was dragged out in many people’s eyes, taking the entire offseason. Lamb did not participate in training camp, just getting back into the practice routine.

Jerry Jones went viral during the negotiations by saying there was no urgency on his end to get the extension finalized. Well, he doubled down recently, saying the end goal of getting Lamb on the field ultimately worked.

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“I don’t see any rewards or any penalties on your timer,” Jones told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith in a sitdown interview. “Does he get on the field? And does he get on the field when he ought to be out there? I had no urgency at all about getting him to the field.”

From the outside, the numbers seem simple. Lamb received a four-year extension worth $136 million with a $38 million signing bonus, the highest-ever total for a wide receiver. The contract is in the ballpark of what many experts predicted months prior.

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Jones explained the smaller dollar amounts down the road is what the Cowboys were really focused on. There are still a few contracts to hand out, with Micah Parsons and Tyler Smith being specifically mentioned.

“It was important to us to own every aspect to really try to husband as much of the resources that would go in Lamb’s direction,” Jones said. “It was critical for us to husband $1,000, $50,000, $100,000 because in our system, that’s that much more we’ve got to pay Parsons, that’s that much more to pay that young offensive lineman that we want to renew his contract three years from now. It’s a zero-sum game.”

With quarterback Dak Prescott not having a contract extension at the moment, Lamb is currently Dallas’ biggest piece of the future. Jones knows the overall picture was about rewarding and paying Lamb fairly but making sure the franchise’s future was secure stayed at the top of his mind.

“CeeDee’s contract had everything to do with how important it was to the future of the Dallas Cowboys,” Jones said. “It had everything to do with rewarding him for how we had evolved as a key player for the Dallas Cowboys. But it also had everything with how he was going to fit in our picture down the road.”