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The Dallas Cowboys may have opened Pandora's Box years ago with their mishandling of Ezekiel Elliott's contract negotiations. Now, former Super Bowl champion James Jones says the same tactics have come back to haunt them in the current drama with star wide receiver CeeDee Lamb.
Lamb and the Cowboys have been locked in a tense standoff since the offseason. Lamb is demanding a new deal that would make him the highest-paid receiver in the NFL, while Cowboys management struggles to juggle multiple contracts, including that of quarterback Dak Prescott.
According to reports, the two sides haven't met since late July. As a show of force, Lamb has been absent from training camp since the offseason, refusing to step foot in the facilities even as preseason gets underway.
James Jones believes there's only one person to blame for Lamb's "bad behavior": Jerry Jones. The way the Cowboys' owner handled negotiations with Elliott in 2019 set a precedent that Lamb is now following five years later.
Jerry Jones' convenient amnesia
In a recent episode of SPEAK, a YouTube sports analysis show, James Jones pointed out that "CeeDee is in the offense. CeeDee is very, very valuable to them-damn near as valuable as Dak Prescott." Jones added that if Lamb had shown up for camp, his contract situation would've taken a backseat to Dak's.
"If CeeDee Lamb and Dak were both in camp and they're both there, you get the quarterback done first," Jones said, explaining that Lamb and his reps understand how NFL contract negotiations work.
The former Green Bay Packers receiver also noted that Jerry Jones has encouraged this holdout strategy. In 2019, when asked about his talks with Ezekiel Elliott, the Cowboys owner famously responded, "Zeke who?"
That comment led to Elliott walking away from the negotiating table and taking a highly publicized vacation in Cabo San Lucas. The parallels to Lamb's current standoff are striking, especially after Jerry Jones recently said there's "no urgency" to finalize a deal for the star receiver.
Rewarding bad behavior
Former NFL player and SPEAK analyst Emmanuel Acho chimed in, saying, "That's exactly what Zeke did. Zeke got paid first because he went to Cabo, and Dak went to practice. The Cowboys have already rewarded bad behavior once when they did that with Ezekiel Elliott."
Acho continued, "CeeDee could be there, but he's choosing not to be. So, can you really reward him for pulling the same stunt?" In the end, Elliott got his way, receiving a $90 million contract that made him one of the highest-paid running backs in the NFL.
With the regular season just weeks away, the Lamb saga is far from over. All it takes is one side blinking for this game of chicken to end-but it could have unexpected consequences for everyone involved.