{"id":423977,"date":"2026-09-02T13:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T13:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/423977\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T13:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T13:46:12","slug":"cowboys-stephen-jones-on-pickens-lamb-not-sure-any-team-can-pay-two-wrs-at-top-of-market-latest-nfl-news-analysis-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/423977\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowboys’ Stephen Jones on Pickens, Lamb: Not sure any team can pay two WRs at top of market | Latest NFL News, Analysis & Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost immediately after franchise tagging<\/a> Pickens this offseason, the Cowboys made it known that they had no plans<\/a> to seek out a long-term solution with the wide receiver in 2026. The club preferred Pickens prove he can walk the straight and narrow yet again before that discussion kicks into high gear in 2027. To his credit, the 25-year-old receiver, coming off a 1,429-yard, nine-touchdown campaign, hasn\u2019t made a fuss about the team’s plans.<\/p>\n

“George is really wanting to put back-to-back years on top of one another so it’ll help his market,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd certainly, I know at some point — as does every player in this league — will want to be rewarded with a long-term contract. So that certainly puts pressure on us to have a unique situation there at wide receiver.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are some instances with teams paying two receivers. Ja’Marr Chase<\/a> and Tee Higgins<\/a>\u00a0come to mind. A.J. Brown<\/a>and DeVonta Smith<\/a> were just broken up in Philly. However, it\u2019s far from the norm and takes some juggling.<\/p>\n

Pickens’ $27.298 million franchise tag figure for this season places him 19th among WRs. Lamb, who has three years left on his contract, is sixth at $34 million. There could be ways to structure a new deal for Pickens that would allow the Cowboys to make things work in the short term — big-money deals always lower the immediate salary cap charge. However, Dallas has shown no interest at this stage of paying two WRs top-10 money.<\/p>\n

The decision to table talks with Pickens has pushed the urgency of this discussion into next season. In the meantime, the Cowboys hope to benefit and finally make a deep playoff push that has eluded the club for three decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristian Parker will tell you, who went against us twice a year, what a challenge that it was for the Eagles when they played us, and he was on the defensive side of the ball trying to defend Dak (Prescott)<\/a> and those two receivers,\u201d Jones said, \u201cnot to mention our running game and (Jake) Ferguson<\/a> and (Ryan) Flournoy<\/a> and that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost immediately after franchise tagging Pickens this offseason, the Cowboys made it known that they had no plans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9952,6348,102,113,104,103,5962,223,9953,1772],"class_list":["post-423977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-around-the-nfl","tag-ceedee-lamb","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-george-pickens","tag-news","tag-no-minute","tag-preseason"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}