As they have for every season since their win in 1995’s Super Bowl XXX, Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys are gearing up to try to win the franchise’s sixth Lombardi Trophy.
They should have a sense of urgency as they pack up for camp in Oxnard. The window for the Cowboys to finally put an end to their championship drought of nearly thirty seasons may be closing soon.
As soon as the end of the 2027 NFL season at that.
If March 1, 2028, arrives and the Cowboys have still not won their sixth Super Bowl, big changes will likely be coming.
After the end of the 2027 campaign, maybe even if they’ve won a title or at least played in a Super Bowl, the Cowboys are looking at a rebuild. Primarily due to the number of high-value contracts the Cowboys have that will end, or that have opt-outs after 2027.
As Dallas’ contracts stand now, they only have 34 players under wraps through the end of 2027.
When the 2028 season opens for business that March, there will only be 14 of the players on the roster today that will still be under contract.
That assumes Micah Parsons is extended at some point this year. There are some pretty big opt-outs that kick in when the new league year opens.
On The Cutting Board?
There will be at least two big contracts that will have opt outs available to Dallas once the 2028 league year opens.
Quarterback Dak Prescott, who will be 35 that year, would still have two years at nearly $88 million left on his current deal. Cutting him after 2027 would trim roughly $39 million off that number.
Receiver CeeDee Lamb would also have two years remaining on his recent deal for $32 million in salary.
Cutting him loose would trim $14 million from the payroll.
If the Cowboys have come no closer to a championship over the next three years, Jones would be wise to cut them loose. He would then need to do one of two things.
The Next Step
Assuming Jones is still alive, and remains as Owner/GM, his options if the drought reaches 32 seasons would be (1) to sell the team. Or (2) to acknowledge the team is more than just “one player away” and rebuild.
The first option would be preferred by most of the fanbase.
The second option would probably only come if Jones were to turn over control of the team to his son, Stephen.
A full rebuild, which this team should have done on at least two occasions since the end of the 2006 season, will take at least three-to-five years.
The elder Jones lacks the patience for that. Which means he’ll create a third option:
Don’t change anything and watch the years without a title continue to add up.
a Dallas Cowboys fan, since the 70’s as a Cowboys fan and after seeing the Cowboys Schedule in 2025 the Cowboys will lose ten games and during the season Jerry Jones and all the sports media are clueless wondering why the Cowboys won’t make the playoffs and Jerry Jones will fire Brian Schottenheimer that’s nothing new
Apparently you don’t pay attention to other teams!! There’s no way the Cowboys lose 10 games!! And why do you keep bringing up the “sports media” always backing up Jerry and the cowboys!! I really don’t know what media you listen to or watch, but I can’t remember the last time I heard any sports media say they think the Cowboys are the best team or that they think the cowboys are gonna make it to the Super Bowl or that Jerry has put together a great team or anything like that!! Everything I’ve seen always has the cowboys missing the playoffs or at best not making it out of the wild card game!! I don’t ever hear the sports media talk good about the Cowboys!! So you mite wanna consider finding a different channel or to watch or station to listen to!! And if you wanna talk about somebody being clueless, I think you should look in the mirror!! You are the most clueless person I’ve ever seen make comments on here!! None of your comments make sense and/or everything you talk about is completely wrong!! And there’s no way you are a Cowboys fan…. A Cowboys fan would at least know a little bit about the team or what’s going on with the team, but you know literally nothing!! I have seriously never seen anybody make such stupid comments!! And that’s bad cause I have seen some dumb comments before, but none of them top you!!
Lamb is by far their best player on offense, and maybe on the whole team. I would keep him even with a rebuild.
Richard, do you have a prediction on their record right now?
I agree, although Parsons is right up there with him!!
And I’m not Richard, but I predict that the record will be around 10-7 and 11-6!! We mite drop to 9-8!! But I think we have a better team than most people think, and as long as we stay healthy we shouldn’t have any problems getting to 10 wins!! We won 7 last year and we were playing with practice squad players for half the season and we had bad QB play all year, no running game and our best receiver was rarely in single coverage situations, but now he has more chances for single coverage now that we have a true number 2 receiver!! And Dak always comes back from an injury and balls out, but even if he gets hurt again, I feel like Joe Milton can be a lot better than Cooper Rush and Trey Lance!! And our defense is a lot more loaded this year than it was last year!! So even if we have injured players on defense, we have plenty of backups that can come in and keep the defense going!! It’s gonna take a lot for us to have to go to get players from the practice squad!! And as far as the schedule goes, we do have a rough schedule, but that’s cause the teams were good last year!! At least half of the teams that were good last year, won’t be as good this year, so our schedule just looks worse than it is!! Like the vikings…. They won’t be as good as they were last year!! They have a new QB that hasn’t played a meaningful game in the NFL yet and they lost some good players too, so they won’t be as good this year, and we should be able to beat them as long as we’re healthy!! But that’s just one example…. You can look at the schedule and then look at the teams roster and see what teams have changed this off season and you’ll see that a few of the teams on our schedule won’t be as good as they were last year!! And then we have the teams that we shouldn’t have any problems beating!! So like I said, I think we should get around 10 wins this year!! I wouldn’t be surprised if we only got 9 wins, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if we made it to 12 wins either!! But I’ll stay at 10 wins for now!! Sorry for the long comment!! I’ve been doing it a lot lately for some reason!!