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Dallas Cowboys cornerback DaRon Bland.
One thing we can say about the Dallas Cowboys with a high level of certainty is that when it comes to big-time contracts and who gets paid and who doesn’t, the franchise has displayed little to no ability to learn from its mistakes.
Take, for example, the 2 biggest contracts they’ve handed out on defense in the last 5 years — a 5-year, $97.6 million extension for cornerback Trevon Diggs before the 2023 season and a 4-year, $90 million extension for cornerback Daron Bland before the 2025 season.
Diggs didn’t deliver another day of elite play once he signed his deal and was eventually released late in the 2025 season after he missed 31 regular-season games over the last 3 seasons.
Bland seems headed down that same path, which is why Bleacher Report’s Brad Gagnon put him at the top of his list of the NFL’s “Most Overpaid Players” after the critical phase of the 2026 free agency cycle — although he wasn’t the only one on the roster to catch a stray.
“Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark were also strong candidates with output that doesn’t align with $20-plus million AAVs, but Bland is the clear-cut winner,” Gagnon wrote on Friday. “The 2022 fifth-round pick has one good season under his belt, but that was enough to earn him a four-year, $90 million deal. He’s missed significant time while being consistently rocked in coverage when on the field the last two seasons, all as the sixth-highest-paid corner in the sport.”
Big Money Came 2 Years After NFL All-Pro Season
With Diggs, at least, the Cowboys can say they paid him when he was coming off a season where he looked like 1 of the NFL’s best players. Over the 2022 and 2023 seasons, before he signed his contract, Diggs had 14 interceptions, made 2 consecutive Pro Bowls, and earned NFL All-Pro honors in 2022.
In Bland’s case, the Cowboys paid him 2 years after he was an NFL All-Pro in 2023, and after he’d already shown he was injury-prone. He’s missed 15 regular-season games over the last 2 seasons — the first 10 games in 2024 with a stress fracture and season-ending foot surgery that cost him the last 5 games in 2025.
“(Cowboys) gave Bland a huge extension,” The Ringer’s Bill Simmons said after Bland signed in August 2025. “Like $90 million. So, it’s like, ‘Well now that we don’t have to pay Micah Parsons, we have more money to overpay some of the other players on the team.’ I don’t even know if he’s a Top 20 cornerback.”
Bland’s 65.2 overall grade from Pro Football Focus ranked him 46th out of 114 eligible players at his position last season.
Cowboys Could Have Paid Micah Parsons Instead
The Cowboys had the NFL’s worst defense in 2025. That was largely because they traded 4-time NFL All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers right before the regular season.
Parsons’ exit was preceded by several years of nasty contract negotiations between Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Parsons, and his agent, David Mulugheta. The Packers finally paid him what he wanted with a 4-year, $186 million contract extension.
The combined value of the contracts for Diggs and Bland comes to $187.6 milion — almost the exact amount it cost the Packers to sign Parsons.
Tony Adame covers the NFL for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Washington Commanders, Dallas Cowboys, Baltimore Ravens, Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos. A veteran sports writer and editor since 2004, his work has been featured at Stadium Talk, Yardbarker, NW Florida Daily News and Pensacola News Journal. More about Tony Adame
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