Did injury worry cause Cowboys' Dak Prescott to sign extension?

Some were surprised to learn hours before the Dallas Cowboys opened their 2024 season with a game at the Cleveland Browns this past Sunday that Dallas star quarterback Dak Prescott had agreed to a four-year contract extension reportedly worth $240M with $231M guaranteed.

For an article published on Wednesday, ESPN's Dan Graziano suggested that the gruesome compound fracture and dislocation of his right ankle that Prescott suffered in October 2020 had something to do with the 31-year-old accepting the offer made by Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones.

"...While he's fine to play and there aren't any long-term concerns, there's no guarantee how this season will go behind the Cowboys' revamped offensive line," Graziano said about Prescott. "The Cowboys know all about the ankle, have examined it many times and are comfortable with it. Would another team in free agency have felt as good about guaranteeing four or five years at that amount of money? Maybe, maybe not."

Prescott began Sunday in the final year of a contract that included a no-tag clause and finished second in the 2023 regular-season Most Valuable Player Award voting. Some believed he could have inked a deal worth up to $70M annually had he enjoyed another stellar campaign with the Cowboys and then reached the open market in March 2025.

Conflicting stories emerged before this past weekend regarding whether Jones would've continued contract talks with Prescott's camp beyond the Cleveland game. According to Graziano, Prescott and agent Todd France "hadn't ruled out continuing negotiations into the season" but viewed Week 1 as "sort of a soft deadline" because "Prescott's position was that the price was likely to go up with every week leading into potential free agency."

Prescott and the Cowboys dominated the Browns en route to earning a 33-17 road victory.

Prescott likely has few regrets about staying with what's been the only NFL home he's known since he entered the league via the 2016 draft. After all, he has hundreds of millions of reasons to want to remain the face of "America's Team" for as long as possible.

With that said, one can't help but wonder if he would've made a different business decision this summer had he not gone down with the brutal ankle injury roughly four years ago.