The Dallas Cowboys are heading into one of the most important seasons in recent franchise history.

Instead of extending Dak Prescott after the 2024 season, Jerry Jones and company chose to do nothing and are letting their franchise QB play out the final year of his current deal. Extending him after the early playoff loss would have opened up salary cap space to add talent around Prescott and the Cowboys would have likely gotten him on a bargain deal, but now things have drastically changed.

With Trevor Lawrence recently re-setting the QB market, Prescott now holds all the leverage over the Dallas Cowboys and regardless of how he plays in 2024, he will have a line of teams waiting to make him one of the highest paid quarterbacks in the NFL after this season.

Beyond Prescott, the Cowboys have two other significant decisions to make regarding the team’s two biggest stars. Both CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons are due for contract extensions, with Lamb being the priority ahead of the 2024 campaign.

While Jones and the Dallas brass have expressed a desire to reach a contract extension with Lamb — who is coming off his best NFL season as an All-Pro with 1,749 yards and 12 touchdowns — but as June turns to July, no deal has been done.

Again, Jones and the Cowboys brass have seemingly waited too long. Now that Justin Jefferson reached a deal with the Vikings to make him the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL, Lamb is likely seeking a deal equal or greater to Jefferson’s.

While most NFL insiders believe Dallas will eventually reach an agreement with their star receiver, as each day passes with no new deal, speculation about Lamb’s future only continues to grow.

Dallas Cowboys WR CeeDee Lamb Planning To Sit Out Of Training Camp If He Doesn’t Have A New Deal

It wasn’t a massive deal when Lamb missed the team’s voluntary workouts waiting for a contract extension.

And even though it earned him a five-figure fine, it wasn’t necessarily a problem that he skipped minicamp earlier this month in protest.

But training camp is a much different story. That’s the last chance before the start of the season for the Dallas Cowboys to fine-tune every aspect of their playbook and make sure everyone is on the same page heading into 2024.

According to Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News, the 25-year-old who led the league in receptions last year and set a single-season club record for receiving yards “is expected to miss training camp if he doesn’t get a new deal.”

Lamb is currently slated to play on the fifth-year option that the Dallas Cowboys placed on him and would be due $17.99 million for the 2024 season. The Vikings’ Justin Jefferson, the Eagles’ A.J. Brown, the Lions’ Amon-Ra St. Brown, and the Dolphins’ Jaylen Waddle have all signed huge contracts in the past two months, each of them worth over $28.25 million average annual value.

It’s clear the Cowboys star receiver is no longer willing to play at a discount and he’s going to take drastic action in order to force Jerry Jones and company to make a move.

If Lamb is absent from camp, soon-to-be-31-year-old Brandin Cooks would serve as the offense’s top receiving threat. Behind him is a collection of young and mostly inexperienced wide receivers who- combined- accounted for all of 40 catches last season.

The longer the standoff between Lamb and the Dallas Cowboys continues, the worse it’s going to be for the team overall heading into the 2024 campaign with so many questions about the future of the franchise looming, It would be smart for Jones to swallow his pride and hurry up and get a deal done, or America’s team will just have another massive distraction when the team needs to focus on football more than ever.