DALLAS (105.3 The Fan) - The term "team-friendly" gets brought up every time a player hits the open market, and that hasn't changed when it comes to the contract status of Dallas Cowboys star quarterback Dak Prescott.
Lefkoe then asked Emmitt Smith if someone were to ask him to have taken a pay cut back when he was the star of the Cowboys, would he have done it? Smith has experience with the contract situation Prescott finds himself in. He sat out the first two games of the 1993 season as he sought to be paid like a quarterback. Smith ultimately relented and settled on a contract that paid him slightly more than Thurman Thomas, which still made him the highest-paid running back in the league at the time.
"I practically did that. In some cases, you leave money on the table. You don't get everything you ask for. I wanted $28 million (total) but I had to holdout," Smith said of the negotiation. "I wanted to be an $8 (or) $9 million back. I wanted $28 (million) for three to four years."
Smith was then asked who talked him into making the decision to take less than what he wanted to be paid.
"No one talked to me. It's just the fact that when I missed those first two games, it was just like, 'okay, just give me the money I need to have. Let me go ahead and do what I need to go do and maybe I'm back at the table again (down the road).'"
Over a week ago, Prescott was asked if he believed he was worth a contract with an annual salary of $40 million, which would make him the highest-paid player in NFL history?
"You tell me," Prescott said to Kimberley A. Martin of Yahoo Sports, before adding that he trusts his agents and the Cowboys to get something done. Prescott wasn't asked about the possibility of being franchise-tagged, or if he believed a deal would get done prior to March 10, the deadline for teams to tag a player.
If the Cowboys placed the franchise tag on Prescott it wouldn't prohibit them from continuing to negotiate a new contract in the offseason.
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