A little less than two weeks away from the start of the regular season Dallas Cowboys star receiver CeeDee Lamb still doesn’t have a new contract.
Many expected a deal would’ve been reached by this point, but Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has chosen to slow play things, making heart rates in Dallas rise the closer it gets to Week 1 without the team’s top offensive star under contract.
But a deal could seemingly happen at any moment given how close ESPN’s Adam Schefter revealed the two sides are on Monday’s episode of “Get Up.”
“The two sides are roughly — roughly because I don’t know the specifics — about a million dollars a year apart,” Schefter said. “How hard can it be to bridge that difference to get one of the most valuable players in football back into the fold less than two weeks before the start of the regular season and Dallas has to take on the Cleveland Browns? We’re talking about a million dollars here. If you’re the Dallas Cowboys, puff up the last few years, inflate the average salary, get the guy in camp and get it done. They’re not that far apart.”
Jones had little to say regarding Lamb’s contract following Dallas’ preseason finale against the Los Angeles Chargers on Saturday, telling reporters he had no updates and he was only going to talk about the players who showed up to the game.
“It’s hard to think that they’ve allowed it to linger — both sides — to this spot, to this time,” Schefter added. “Assuming it does get done…then you’ve got to worry about him getting back in, getting up to conditioning level, soft tissue injury — like what are we doing?”
The 25-year-old wideout is presumably in line for one of the richest wide receiver contracts in NFL history coming off his breakout 135-reception, 1,749-yard, 12-touchdown season.
Spotrac projects Lamb’s market value around $35.1 million per year, which would make him the highest-paid WR in the NFL, just ahead of Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson ($30M per year.)