The Dallas Cowboys have already had one of the strangest offseasons of any team in the league. After Jerry Jones declared that the team would be all in for the upcoming season, the team instead allowed six starters to leave in free agency and lost another to retirement, and signed only one outside free agent.
The Cowboys have cried poor, claiming they simply could not make any moves because they don't have the salary-cap space to do so. Of course, that is of their own doing. Had they signed Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and/or Micah Parsons to contract extensions, they'd have a bunch more space to work with.
Alas, they have not extended any of their star trio. And with Lamb headed into the fifth-year option season on his rookie contract, he is apparently not expected to attend the voluntary portion of the team's offseason program and could even hold out into training camp, according to the Dallas Morning News.
This, again, is a mess of the Cowboys' own making. Lamb became extension-eligible last offseason, and yet the Cowboys apparently did not push very hard to get him signed to a long-term deal. Now, they are over a barrel with Lamb coming off a season where he was named a first-team All-Pro and posted more targets, catches, receiving yards, and touchdowns than he did the year before for the fourth consecutive season.
Lamb has now posted receiving lines of 74-935-5, 79-1102-6, 107-1359-9, and 135-1749-12 across his four NFL seasons, and has gone on a Pro Bowl - Second Team All-Pro - First Team All-Pro progression over the last three years. Had the Cowboys signed him a year ago, he almost surely would have commanded less money than he will now, when he is very likely to break the bank and reset the wide receiver market alongside Justin Jefferson and Ja'Marr Chase.
The Cowboys have a history of waiting to extend stars and it costing them a significant amount of money (see: Prescott, Dak), while also paying players coming off major injuries (Michael Gallup and Terrence Steele) or at non-premium positions (Ezekiel Elliott and Jaylon Smith) at the first opportunity. It is not a good way to do business, and it is again going to hamstring their future plans.
Lamb, however, made it clear that he will remain a Cowboy, telling TMZ, "Yeah, I'll be in Dallas!" He said that right now, he is just going through his normal offseason, "Relaxing, chilling, working out, of course." He didn't appear to address the question of whether he will attend the offseason workouts and/or training camp, but given his production and importance to the team, it would seem that he is going to get paid sooner or later and end up operating as Prescott's clear-cut top target once again.
