Dallas City News

Thursday was a weird sort of day for the Dallas Cowboys in that it represented something somewhat significant relative to the CeeDee Lamb holdout. You see, Thursday was August the 15th. It was August 14th, 2023 when the Cowboys took care of the last holdout they experienced in Zack Martin. Thursday marked a deeper part of the rabbit hole visited this time around than last.

Of course we are still a bit off of Dallas re-visiting where they set up camp during Ezekiel Elliott’s holdout five years ago as that took us all the way into September. Whatever the case, Lamb is still not present at training camp and a contract extension is still (seemingly) necessary for him to join his teammates. Given that the Oxnard portion of camp is almost over it stands to reason that Lamb won’t set foot in California.

That is, of course, unless a deal comes to pass in the extremely near future, but will that happen? Cowboys EVP Stephen Jones sat down for an interview with the mothership and was obviously asked about the state of contractual things with Lamb as well as Dak Prescott.

“Ongoing. They’re evolving. I know everybody likes them to be done immediately. As I said it’s a challenge for us. In terms of working three of the better football players in this league. Trying to get them in a situation where they’re happy and it works for us as well. We’ll continue to work, pencils are up, we’re working hard at it. Hopefully we’ll continue to make some progress and get one or two of these guys done.”

Jones discussed the “three” which is obviously a nod to Micah Parsons and that he is eligible for an extension himself. This answer is effectively the same one that he has given for months now and what has become the official party line of the team.

Meanwhile the Cowboys continue to draw national criticism for their lack of spending. Wednesday saw Mike Greenberg go as far as calling them “cheap” while noting that they have had tremendous off the field success what with how it was recently announced that they are worth north of $10 billion, the first professional sports team where that is the case.

Stephen touched on a few other things in his interview, but obviously the status of the extensions is the biggest storyline surrounding the team as it has been since the offseason first began.

One other subject discussed was last week’s trade of Nahshon Wright for Andrew Booth:

“At the end of the day systems can be so important for teams and the players. And certainly, Zim’s, with the system he runs, the man to man type system… I think really fits more with Booth’s skillset. Flipside of that is the Vikings, I think they run quite a bit of zone and Nahshon can be a great fit for them. Obviously Nahshon a third-round pick for us, Booth a second-round pick for them. I do think the good news for us is Booth’s even a year younger in terms of being around and helping the salary cap. But it’ll be great to see Booth out here.”

Salary cap space obtained. Boom. Victory.