In case you missed it, quarterback Dak Prescott agreed to a four-year deal worth $160 million to stay with the Dallas Cowboys. It’s a massive deal for such a short period of time, and it’s set up where Dak can get paid even more when he enters his 30s.
When an athlete — usually a quarterback — signs such a high-earning contract, a portion of fans and the media will criticize the deal. They’ll say he’s not a team player, he’s selfish, and he’s making the team take such a massive cap hit that it prevents them from using that on other players to build a title winning team.
Tom Brady is usually the example those people give when talking about an unselfish player, and that’s what happened here. Throughout his career, Brady hasn’t been the highest paid quarterback in the NFL. He does typically take less money and reworks his contracts in order for his team to have more money available to get other players in the hopes of winning championships. And while him taking less money isn’t the biggest reason for that, Brady does have seven rings as a result.
That’s great. Tom Brady can do that; good for him. It’s just disingenuous to use Brady as the example to shame others for trying to maximize their earning power simply because Brady chooses not to. Brady should be the exception, not the rule.
I realize we’re talking about millionaires here, and even before his new contract, Dak was insanely rich. But when we hate on an NFL player for receiving a high-earning contract, it puts undue blame on someone who failed to meet our unrealistic expectations that he should take less because we feel it’s the right thing to do. Especially when we live in a country so predicated on the “free market” and have seen countless examples in society and in movies that “Greed is good.” Jerry Jones should know, he’s profited massively due to Texas freezing over and many Texans being without power.
More people need to realize that for the most part, especially in the working world, loyalty and trust are myths. Even before COVID, there were massive layoffs in most industries, salaries were getting cut, and everything around us is costing more. When my grandmother retired from being a factory worker 30 years ago, she got a full pension paid to her for the rest of her life as a “thank you” for her years of service.
Now, you can do everything right and be the perfect employee, and you can be out on your ass on any given day for reasons beyond your control. And if you worked for that company your entire adult life and they lay you off, you’ll be lucky to get a “thank you” from them as their stock price goes up, because they treated you more like a thing than a human being.
No one’s throwing a pity party for millionaire NFL players when the top players are making the money they’re making, but it should be said that they too experience a form of disloyalty and lack of trust from their employer. It’s a different kind of disloyalty than what the average person goes through, but it’s there and if that’s the case, why should the players be expected to be loyal to the owners?
Lest we forget, Prescott suffered a devastating ankle injury while he was franchise-tagged. He got a compound fracture, and after seeing what happened to Alex Smith, compound fractures are scary. It wasn’t known at the time if Prescott was going to be able to get back to 100 percent and play again, much less have a job with the Cowboys. The Cowboys were looking at the situation like a business, because they’re making a large financial stake in the guy and he just had a bad injury. I’m not blaming the Cowboys for treating the situation in that way, that’s their perogative. But if that’s the case and the Cowboys are treating football as a business, why can’t Prescott, or any other pro athlete, do the same?
Sure, these players get paid a lot of money to play a game and are living out the dreams of many people. That’s great, but it still comes at a cost. Dennis Rodman said something in The Last Dance that really stuck with me. He said, “I’ll play the game for free, but you get paid for the bullshit after you leave the floor.”
If it was just about showing up and playing, yeah that’s awesome, but it’s a small part of the overall dedication a top athlete needs to have in order to be successful. Not only does a pro athlete need to eat right and train, they practice and study film. Add in various media and sponsor commitments, a lack of privacy that people don’t typically appreciate until that’s gone, and dealing with social media trolls or highly-paid trolls with a national TV platform, the actual amount of time of competing 16 times a year pales in comparison to dealing with all the other non-glamourous stuff that comes with the territory. That, plus the high demand in popularity and the NFL being a multibillion dollar sport, is why pro athletes get paid high amounts of money. And because Dak can’t play football all his life, he needs to get that money while he can- because as he himself has experienced, that can potentially go away at an instant.
Looking at Dak’s new contract in March 2021, his contract looks immense, and it is. But given the expectation that the NFL is about to announce a new TV deal worth nearly double the current cost, the salary cap is going to go up by a tremendous margin. People need to realize that a quarterback’s pay isn’t so much based on how talented they are, but how recently they signed their contract. Prescott is a top-10 quarterback, but even that’s irrelevant. What’s most important is he’s the most recent starting QB to negotiate a long-term contract and the first one to negotiate when owners have a good idea how much networks will be paying them for TV rights for the rest of this decade. When Prescott and the Cowboys get to negotiating his next contract, there’s a good chance multiple quarterbacks will surpass him in pay, and that $160 million might not look as high in comparison. That’s how the process works.
Money is really what it comes down to, and while the allure of winning a championship is everyone’s dream, not everyone wins a Super Bowl even if they were the best. It’s a bit pragmatic to think like this, but titles aren’t guaranteed; money is. Prescott is getting $126 guaranteed in this contract. If he took half that, it still doesn’t guarantee the Cowboys win a Super Bowl.
The reason why Tom Brady has won seven titles isn’t totally due to him taking less money. Brady is relentless with film study and the weight room, he’s had great coaching all his career, and has had players around him who played as a team. It’s not like the Patriots went all out and overspent on star players just because their quarterback took less money. They shaped their team on veterans looking to win a title before retiring, players who other teams had already cast aside for off the field reasons, and discovering diamonds in the rough and turning them into stars.
The Patriots were never really a team who splashed the cash in free agency for established stars, and in all three situations I mentioned, they didn’t really need to spend that much to get those kinds of players. Brady taking less money had less to do with the team signing better players, and more about not wanting Bill Belichick to call his bluff and get rid of him- or else the magical ride of winning titles in New England would be over.
Anyone who has ever considered asking for a raise can, in their own way, identify with that. We don’t make millions, and we probably won’t have the luxury of 31 other companies willing to hire us if we get let go for seeking a raise, but the fear of potentially losing your job if you ask for a raise is a real situation no matter how much you make. Because unless you do have a special skill that few people possess, someone is always willing to work for less money.
Which brings up the final — but arguably most important — point about how it’s bad to compare Brady’s situation on Prescott’s. It’s because both people have totally different lives.
Last week, NFL Network’s Jane Slater went viral for her take on unpaid internships and underpaid jobs in sports media. She described her pathway to where she ended up, which started with having jobs that didn’t pay well. What she neglected to mention was that her family had money and her grandfather was the head of Wolf Brand Chili, so she had the luxury of being underpaid at the start, and that’s a reason the media as a whole isn’t that diverse.
When it comes to Brady, he’s the most marketable football player in the league. His endorsements alone will rival what he’s being paid by his team; while he doesn’t have to do it, taking less will be less of an impact on his wallet. And if he didn’t have that, there’s always Gisele Bündchen’s earning power as a supermodel.
As much as Brady is the focus in the United States, it’s Gisele that arguably brings in more money and is more well-known worldwide. And if anyone doubts her worldwide appeal, more people worldwide watched Gisele present the World Cup trophy than watch Tom win any of his Super Bowls.
The point is that Brady is in a unique situation that makes it easier for him to take less money for what he feels is for the “greater good.” Again, we’re talking about people making millions here, and Prescott isn’t poor by any stretch, but every player has their own situation.
That’s ultimately the key to all this. Comparing Brady’s unique situation to anyone else perpetuates the same old tired argument that players should just be thankful they’re making a living by playing a game and living out a dream lots of us had when we were kids. Especially when, if we were put in the same situation, whether we want to publicly admit it or not, almost everyone would want to cash in just like Prescott did.
Yes, in the grand scheme of things, Dak Prescott is in a much better situation than someone who’s underpaid and is working a 9-5 job. But to dismiss someone else’s problems simply because they’re rich and famous reduces those people to things we see on the TV only meant to entertain the masses. By that logic, the average person should have no right to complain about their problems, because they’re doing better than someone who’s homeless and they have it worse. It’s all relative when you separate yourself, look at the big picture, and really break things down.
If Tom Brady or anyone else wants to take less money because they feel it will help make the team better, good for them. If Dak Prescott or anyone else wants to try and maximize their earning power and make as much as they possibly can when they can, good for them.
In the end, the Cowboys and Dak Prescott wanted to be together for the foreseeable future. And while negotiations got a bit tense, both sides got it done and both sides seem satisfied with the end result. Good for them.
