I was standing there alongside other esteemed members of the Fourth Estate, down in the bowels of Cleveland’s awkwardly named Huntington Bank Field, listening to Dak Prescott describe his thoughts after agreeing to the biggest contract in National Football League history.

“To me, it was because I was up,” Prescott said. “The next guy will expect to beat me. That’s the way the league is going.”

Simple, matter-of-fact economics. It was Dak’s turn. Soon it would be somebody else’s. Thinking back to the fact Derek Carr was the game’s highest-paid player just a few years earlier, for a brief amount of time, anyway, it made the most sense to me. But as massive a jump as Dak’s contract represented — leaping to $60 million in average annual value above the cluster of quarterbacks gathered at $55 million — I did stop to wonder when that jump was coming.

We are still waiting.

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Buffalo’s Josh Allen, coming off a league MVP season and another near miss at reaching the Super Bowl in a difficult AFC championship loss at Kansas City, signed his extension at the start of the league offseason this weekend and remained stuck on the $55 million plateau. He gets a slightly bigger guarantee than Dak ($250 million to Prescott’s $231 million) but Allen’s contract is a six-year deal, not four years. There are mitigating circumstances — Allen’s previous deal had not expired so he was not a year away from free agency — but one fact remains.

Dak’s time is still Dak’s time. And when it comes to the business of NFL contracts, the league’s most savvy businessman and owner of its most profitable club still struggles with the big deals necessary to build a team in the modern era.

You know Dak missed half of the 2024 season and the whole thing was a mess which is why there is a new coach and a new “feeling” about the team. The Cowboys are good with creating new feelings, not so good with fashioning championship contenders. So while Allen is still in the prime of his career — he was the first quarterback to throw for 25 touchdowns, run for 10 and throw fewer than 10 interceptions, even after the Bills let his top target Stefon Diggs go to Houston — Dak will play out this record-setting deal as something of an immobile quarterback, based on what we witnessed last season.

There’s more. With the Cowboys, there’s always more.

You may have noticed Dallas did agree to a new contract with its best defensive tackle, Osa Odighizuwa, last week. This is progress, at least compared to letting Johnathan Hankins walk away to Seattle a year ago on a one-year, $2 million deal. But to keep Osa, Jones had to spend $52 million guaranteed on a four-year, $80 million contract. It’s a hefty, hefty deal for a good but not game-changing defensive tackle. In truth, the Cowboys need someone as good or better alongside him instead of former first-round pick Mazi Smith. So there is still expensive work to be done there or the club needs to spend one of its first two draft picks on the interior if anyone is to consider that hole plugged, and it has been an ongoing problem whether the coordinator was Dan Quinn, Mike Zimmer or now Matt Eberflus.

Related:Five things to know about the Cowboys’ 2025 salary cap: Creating space, big hits and more

In addition, Cleveland made Myles Garrett the highest-paid non-quarterback of all-time over the weekend at an average of $40 million per season. You know what that means for the Cowboys’ prize podcaster? With Dallas late to the signing party as always, Micah Parsons is about to shoot past the $40 million mark. It’s how Jones does things. Maybe it’s how he wants them done.

Jones can brag that the Cowboys have done a great job of roster construction because they have the game’s highest-paid quarterback and, assuming a new Parsons deal, the highest-paid non-quarterback. What better way for a billionaire to show off to his pals that his players are worth more money than theirs?

Fans would prefer to see success in January, a missing element that, thanks to Washington’s NFC championship game run, places the Cowboys at the bottom of the NFC barrel with a 29-year drought. The next two months, Dallas can show how serious it is about fixing that. But we have already seen Stephen Jones’ “selectively aggressive” plan for free agency (revolutionary by Dallas standards) get squashed by his dad.

“I don’t think aggressive is the right word,” Jerry Jones said after last week’s Zack Martin retirement ceremony. “I’m not looking at free agency as a place to fill voids.”

Now, it wouldn’t be against the laws of the NFL for a team’s general manager to say one thing and do another. It’s more like a time-honored practice. So maybe the Cowboys will surprise all of us this week and depart from their pattern of skipping free agency entirely. The moving of money on Dak’s and CeeDee Lamb’s contracts gives them plenty to not just pay Parsons but to add more while still staying under the new, enormous $279.2 million salary cap.

I have my doubts. All we know for sure, when it comes to the money game, is that it’s still Dak’s time.

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