Jerry Jones Take a Sly Dig at CeeDee Lamb-Cowboys Holdout After Admitting Ezekiel Elliott ‘Took Away’ Tyron Smith’s Money

As the Dallas Cowboys head into the new season, tight contractual situations haunt Jerry Jones and the management. We’ve been hearing about the situation with Dak Prescott, but what about CeeDee Lamb? Or Micah Parsons? These two are waiting to cut a long-term deal with the team but haven’t received any confirmation yet.

The Cowboys WR hasn’t been showing up to voluntary practice and it’s unlikely that he will unless he gets a long-term deal. This reminds us of the situation between Ezekiel Elliott and Tyron Smith, and how the latter’s contract took a hit because Elliott deserved more. To make sense of everything, Jerry Jones and his squad finally decided to speak to the media.

Jerry Jones opens up about his plans

For a while, Jones pushed the narrative of his “all in” approach, which turned out to be just a wait-and-watch strategy. But rest assured, Jerry Jones is focused on hiring younger talent and is already pushing the young talent on the team to “step up.”

He drew a parallel to how others on the team suffer when a single entity demands a hefty deal, though deserving. “We’re all in with these young guys coming on and we’re all in with this draft,” said Jones. To put everything into context, Jones pulled out an example of what happened between Ezekiel Elliott and the Cowboys.

“I saw some criticism someplace about Zeke, about paying Zeke,” said Jones and added, “Do I need a raise of hands in this room of everybody that thought Zeke should be on this football team when we had him when he was holding out? Uh but uh we had to adjust the contract which took away from money that could have gone to Tyron.”

“We had to adjust that contract and give it to Zeke, which Zeke deserves,” added Jones, possibly pointing out that CeeDee Lamb might get the contract he deserves, but it might come at a cost to someone else.

CeeDee Lamb is set to make $17,991,000 as base salary this year and has the same in cap hit and dead money. It’s up to the team to decide whether to pay him or not. Ezekiel Elliott, who had a 6-year $90 million extension deal with the Cowboys, didn’t get to complete his tenure and left the team.

How do Zeke and Smith come into the Cowboys’ picture?

Well, for starters, most of the problems with the involved parties boil down to money. The Cowboys, per SI, were fixated on trading Ezekiel Elliott despite a projected cap hit of $16.7 million and $11 million in dead money. This was regardless of whether Zeke stayed with the Cowboys or not.

However, the team also thought that they didn’t get the output from Zeke they liked. But Tyron Smith’s story was a bit different. The Cowboys would have taken a $17.6 million cap hit and would have saved $9 million if they let him go. So, Jones and the team decided what was best and moved on from both players.

This year, though, as Jones mentioned, the team is looking to sign younger talent. Hopefully, they retain their stars Micah Parsons, Dak Prescott, and CeeDee Lamb, as they have been instrumental in the Cowboys’ production.