Dallas City News

Over the last decade and change it became more understood that devoting premium resources to the running back position was not exactly a wise move by NFL teams. This hit close to home in many ways for us Dallas Cowboys fans as the team seemed on the cusp of the phenomenon in general when they let DeMarco Murray walk in free agency in 2015 only to turn around and use the fourth overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft on Ezekiel Elliott. That they doubled-down on Elliott with his extension in 2019 showed their cards for what side of the spectrum they preferred to live on. Obviously Elliott has since been released because of that extension and brought back. Round and round we go.

But philosophically we have seen many NFL teams adopt this line of thinking relative to how they treat the running back position themselves. Gone are the days of the bell-cow and here is the moment of the committee. There are more than one way to win a Super Bowl and the San Francisco 49ers are a few flaps of the butterfly’s wings away from proving that you have to have a top option in order to take home a world title so we should not base everything purely on those results.

It is worth thinking about and contextualizing everything relative to roster construction. In the interest of considering multiple options of multiple things, is it worth adopting this overall disposition on running backs but applying it to the wide receiver position?

An argument against paying CeeDee Lamb, if you want to make one

Let’s make it very clear at the beginning here that CeeDee Lamb should have already received a top-of-market extension a year ago, and that even in our current world where Justin Jefferson turned everything upside down, Lamb needs to be around for the foreseeable future. But that is just an opinion.

Since we have time and idle hands it is worth pondering whether or not there is any sort of argument against the idea of giving Lamb what may be the richest wide receiver contract in NFL history (or something close to it). This is where that running back conversation is relevant.

Every year we hear and see more and more how deep the wide receiver position is in a respective draft class. The world of college football and the offensive coaching available at the NFL level are set up for all-world athletes that play the wide receiver position to make the jump to the pros and thrive right away. Lamb is just one of many examples.

With this being the (general) case, is it worth not paying Lamb and just returning back to the well in hopes of finding another one of him, just one on a four- or five-year rookie contract instead of one of the wealthiest that we have ever seen? To be clear we are entering “it could even be a boat” territory but the prices involved are relevant information, too.

There are a lot of ways to measure which wide receivers are elite these days, but for the purposes of this discussion we are going to look at the last few All-Pro teams. This is one of the more objective awards/honors handed out on an annual basis.

• 2023 First-Team: Tyreek Hill, CeeDee Lamb, Amon-Ra St. Brown
• 2023 Second-Team: A.J. Brown, Puka Nacua, Brandon Aiyuk, Mike Evans
• 2022 First-Team: Justin Jefferson, Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams
• 2022 Second-Team: A.J. Brown, Stefon Diggs, CeeDee Lamb
• 2021 First-Team: Davante Adams, Cooper Kupp, Deebo Samuel
• 2021 Second-Team: Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase
• 2020 First-Team: Davante Adams, Stefon Diggs, Tyreek Hill
• 2020 Second-Team: DeAndre Hopkins, Justin Jefferson, Calvin Ridley, DK Metcalf, Cole Beasley

It is doubtful that any of these names will surprise you. This is a relative who’s who of NFL wide receivers over the course of the last four years (Lamb’s entire time in the NFL by the way). Now here is the list with some distinctions.

• 2023 First-Team: Tyreek Hill (second year with Miami), CeeDee Lamb (rookie contract), Amon-Ra St. Brown (rookie contract)
• 2023 Second-Team: A.J. Brown (second year with Philadelphia), Puka Nacua (rookie), Brandon Aiyuk (rookie contract), Mike Evans (longtime veteran)
• 2022 First-Team: Justin Jefferson (rookie contract), Tyreek Hill (first year with Miami), Davante Adams (first year with Las Vegas)
• 2022 Second-Team: A.J. Brown (first year with Philadelphia), Stefon Diggs (third year with Buffalo), CeeDee Lamb (rookie contract)
• 2021 First-Team: Davante Adams (longtime veteran with Green Bay at the time), Cooper Kupp (first year after extension, triple crown season), Deebo Samuel (rookie contract)
• 2021 Second-Team: Justin Jefferson (rookie contract), Ja’Marr Chase (rookie)
• 2020 First-Team: Davante Adams. (longtime veteran with Green Bay at the time), Stefon Diggs (first season with Buffalo), Tyreek Hill (second season after extension)
• 2020 Second-Team: DeAndre Hopkins (first year with Arizona), Justin Jefferson (rookie), Calvin Ridley (rookie contract), DK Metcalf (rookie contract), Cole Beasley (second season with Buffalo)

All told there are 26 names that were named some sort of All-Pro between 2020 and 2023 and they fall into a variety of categories.

Here is the breakdown (sort of) of specific seasons:

• Rookie contract seasons………………………………………… 12
• First- or second-year veteran with a new team…………… 8
• Third-year or more veteran with that specific team……. 6

Some players fall into multiple categories here (Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill) which illustrates just how incredible they are. But it also shows how there has been movement from even the game’s very best wide receivers.

This whole discussion also emphasizes just how important and critical it is to find a wide receiver and hit on him and reap the benefits of doing so as the Cowboys have done with Lamb. But if you want, if you really want, you can pick up one of those Community Chest or Chance cards and fast forward your way to Go and pick up $200 if you are willing to spend. Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill are proof of that, although their teams have not exactly experienced a ton of success since acquiring them.

But Adams in Green Bay is one of the only players here who was still playing at an elite level so far after their initial rookie contract. Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans serves as a very recent example in that sense, but for the most part the top players here are newbies whether in the league in general or with their respective squads. The number of long-tenured wide receivers playing at an elite level is rather small these days.

If you really squint you can see some logic where paying CeeDee Lamb may not make sense. I would choose not to live in that reality. We will see whether the Dallas Cowboys do or do not soon enough.