What Tannehill's $118M Deal Means to Cowboys QB Dak Prescott

FRISCO - The clock was already ticking, with 10:59 a.m. CT on Monday serving as the deadline for the Dallas Cowboys to either sign Dak Prescott or franchise-tag him.

Does Sunday's news of Ryan Tannehill's four-year, $118-million extension in Tennessee make the clock tick louder? Cowboys management, if COVID-19 were at all a laughing matter, might kid that the Dallas negotiations are "self-quarantined'' by other negotiations.

Let's start with some news of the day and conventional wisdom as former NFL employee-turned-commentator Bucky Brooks chimes in:

If Ryan Tannehilll gets $29.5M per year (4-yr., $118M) w/$62M+ in guarantees, you can forget about Dak settling for $33M annually.. If 1/2 a season of good play gets you almost $30M, a solid 4-year run as a starter is gonna command significantly more money..
— Bucky Brooks (@BuckyBrooks) March 15, 2020

Rack up those numbers on Tannehill again: a $29.5 million APY totaling $118 million over four years - and we would note, a reported $91 million guaranteed (though not fully-guaranteed.)

What might be the Cowboys' reaction to this as they continue negotiations with Prescott while having already offered him more than $33 million APY? Let's bullet-point it ...

*Dallas would concede that Dak is superior to Tannehill - thus the commitment to pay him more than $4 million per year more.

*The Titans' deal is a four-year extension. The Cowboys would like a longer commitment from Prescott - but the Dallas offer that includes more than $105 million is hard to quantify without knowing the years, exactly.

*The Cowboys have never argued against paying Dak over $30 million APY, so in that sense, Tannehill's deal is not a "benchmark,'' except ...

*This contract makes Tannehill the No. 7 QB in terms of APY. What an interesting discussion the Joneses and CAA must be having - presumably while you're reading this - about whether Dak should be pegged at "No. 5'' or "No. 4'' or whether he should be pegged in that way at all.

*Not insignificant: the CAA agent repping Dak? Todd France. One of he agents who did the Tannehill deal? Todd France.

*The Cowboys' argument against that? Remember back at training camp in Oxnard, when owner Jerry Jones sat up on stage and, while speaking, pantomimed the act of unrolling a scroll ... almost an imaginary treasure map meticulously planned and detailed.

"My focus is on our team, not where any of these players contracts are relative to another player,'' Jerry said, arguing that the way the Browns or the Broncos or the Bucs pay their running backs, receivers and quarterbacks is immaterial to how the Cowboys pay theirs. "I'm not dealing in the market. I'm dealing with how to fit this team together.''

In other words, to the Cowboys, today's Tannehill deal does not represent a QB stepping stone. It happened in a vacuum, all by its lonesome, in Tennessee. And way over here is another vacuum, in Frisco, unrelated to the rest of the NFL world.

And now all the Joneses have do so is the same thing they've had to do for the last two years: Persuade Dak Prescott to see it their way.