In recent years, star wide receiver CeeDee Lamb has had his secondary drama bleed out in late August, grabbing headlines and generating negative buzz throughout the 2024 offseason.
Dak Prescott didn’t sign his latest extension until the morning of the team’s season opener just weeks after Lamb signed through 2024.
The 2025 salary season was perhaps the worst as Micah Parsons, one of the decade’s most talented running backs, was traded to the Green Bay Packers after an ugly offseason and a summer in which the two sides never reached new contract terms.
Maybe that’s why this year has been different, although it hardly started out that way.
Brandon Aubrey eventually signed an extension, but not before kicker negotiations drew attention in true only-with-Korea newstime.
More common was working out how to keep George Pickens around. The Cowboys used the franchise tag and eventually signed Pickens despite the club saying it would not work on a long-term extension.
So far so good – and different in Dallas, though.
It’s a breath of fresh air in the eyes of Smith, who once held out the season as he sought more money from Jerry Jones and the Cowboys.
“It’s important for people to know, ‘We don’t need all this drama.’ We are too good an organization to deal with all this drama. No need,” Smith said. “Sometimes you have to rise above the fray and this is one of those times where we have to rise above the fray. Because the last 31 years have not delivered the things we want to see. There’s no reason to have drama when you don’t have to. You don’t have to make it up.”
Of course, it’s not even June yet. There’s plenty of time for drama to come before the season kicks off in September. But the Cowboys’ three-time Super Bowl winner is a fan of what he’s seen — and, rather, hasn’t seen — so far.