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George Pickens vs. Jerry Jones in Contract Negotiations Will Feed Families for Generations
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I call bullshit on this:
“We’re in good shape,” but CeeDee Lamb signed a four-year contract for $136 million and Pickens, a free agent this summer, has been the better of the two and it’s not particularly close. CeeDee missed three games through injury but when you look at touchdowns, yards per game, drops, and other stats that can easily be extrapolated, Pickens looks like WR1a and Lamb looks like WR1b.
Consider this:
CeeDee is the third-highest paid receiver in the league. Total value, AAV, and guaranteed dollars. The only guys earning more than Lamb are Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase. If that’s CeeDee’s value, then Pickens is playing at a pace that’s going to demand four years, something like $140 million. And if he gets it, the Cowboys would have two of the four highest-paid receivers in the NFL and almost 45% of their cap space tied up in three offensive players. It’s not a tenable way to move forward unless they hit on every draft pick over the next two years and fill the cap sheet with rookie contracts, which isn’t going to happen.
The hilarious thing is that Pickens’ agent is Micah Parsons’ agent, David Mulugheta. We all know how those contract negotiations worked out, or didn’t work out. Parsons is a Packer now and the Cowboys defense was largely shit until it ran into Kevin Patullo’s offense the other day. Now they’ve broken .500 on the season and improved to +3500 to win the NFC East, so stitch the banner and get it hung at Jerry World.
The trending thought is that Dallas slaps the franchise tag on Pickens. That’s projecting at $28 million for 2026. Then he either walks or they figure it out from there, but hopefully it gets messy as hell. I hope it gets to a point where Jerry pisses off Mulugheta once more, then calls George Pickens the wrong name, the same way he called Micah Parsons “Michael Parson.” Jerry will go up to a gaggle of sycophantic and obsequious Cowboy scribes and say something like “we are confident that George Pickering will sign with us.” Then Pickens demands a trade and winds up becoming a Raider.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com