Jerry Jones says Cowboys 'expect' Dak Prescott to be with team for a long time

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones started all sorts of chatter about the future of quarterback Dak Prescott late last month when he made an unexpected trade with the 49ers for Trey Lance.

Jones didn’t even tell coach Mike McCarthy was making the deal for the San Fran quarterback. And he also didn’t give a heads up to Prescott. News broke before the Cowboys finished their preseason schedule against the Raiders. Lance, the No. 3 pick of the 2021 draft, now was a Cowboy. All he cost was a fourth-round draft pick.

Was Jones sending a message to the 30-year-old Dak Prescott, whose contract ends after the 2024 season? Prescott’s contract calls for a $59 million cap hit next season. Meanwhile, the Cowboys owner loves to get his starting quarterbacks for a deal, then develop them. After all, Tony Romo was an undrafted free agent, while Dak Prescott arrived in Dallas as a fourth-rounder from Mississippi State. The Cowboys haven’t used a first-round pick on a quarterback since Troy Aikman in 1989. But we digress.

Dak Prescott was a topic when Jones did his weekly appearance, Tuesday, on the Shan and RJ Show in Dallas. First the Cowboys owner brought up money, or as he called it, “machinations” when thinking about Prescott.

“You’re implying on discussion – those numbers on those contracts, those types of numbers, especially the big ones, you live with constantly, that’s always on your mind,” Jones said. “There’s never a time when it goes away because you’ve got to make the entire thing fit. So, it’s on the mind [with] a player decision in the middle of the year. It’s just a fundamental.”

Then he got to the point. Jones said: “We expect Dak to be with us a long time, and yeah, we’re always working around it with several machinations of numbers that would work.”

If Dak Prescott leads Cowboys to Super Bowl, no one will speculate about Jones’ intentions

And Jones continued with the numbers discussions.

“It’s a moving target because you don’t know where you are on any given day for sure with a salary that you want to have on your books in the future,” he said. “Such as something you might want to be doing with a CeeDee Lamb — I know our fans need points to start from here — but those contracts you have to kind of assume you’ll have in place at some number knowing that that’s not going to be exact until you get it negotiated.

“That’s long-winded, but it’s constantly on your mind, it’s just a part of your makeup.”

Dak Prescott and the Cowboys open the season Sunday night against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium. It always needs to be said that this time of year, Dallas fans are super optimistic (and anxious) that the upcoming season will end the Super Bowl drought. If Prescott leads the Cowboys to the Super Bowl, no one is pondering Trey Lance.