Not every contract negotiation has to be contentious and drawn out. Easy wins are possible when a team and a player (and their representative) agree on the player's worth to the club and both want to forge a future together. Such a situation appears to have just happened with the Dallas Cowboys agreeing to a three-year extension with RB Javonte Williams, and there's another situation that's screaming for an easy resolve.
The Cowboys and restricted free agent kicker Brandon Aubrey should agree to a contract extension instead of playing the tender game. There aren't many choices for the club here. Teams that want to retain their RFAs can place any of three tenders on the player, all with different financial incentives.
There's a first-round tender, a second-round tender and an original-round tender; all of them for one season. Once a team places a tender on an RFA, they have until April 17 to sign the tender. Until that point, they are free to negotiate deals with any other team. If they agree to an offer sheet, the original club can either match it, or accept draft compensation based on the level of the tender.
As Aubrey was an undrafted free agent, there's no way the Cowboys use the lowest tender amount, $3,547,000. On the other end, there's not a kicker in the league who makes the first-round tender amount of $8.1 million. That means that the Cowboys could only choose the second-round tender amount of $5.8 million.
There's an argument to be made that if a team wants to give you their second-round pick for a kicker, you should jump at the chance. But Aubrey is simply too good to let walk as a three-time All-Pro with the biggest leg in the league, so the Cowboys need to work out a deal before the offer sheets start coming.
And it should look something like this.
Proposed Extension: 4 years, $26.8 million. This deal is based off making a higher AAV than the current top-paid kicker in the game, the Chiefs' Harrison Butker ($6.4 million). Dallas needs to guarantee the sum of the second-round tender amount ($5.8 million) and 2027 franchise tag ($7 million), or $12.8 million.
It has two void years, the second allows a trigger that would create $4 million worth of cap space in 2027 if needed, but it won't be baked into the contract to leave options open. Dallas would be able to escape Aubrey's deal after two years, saving $4.7 million in cap space with a release that leaves $3 million of dead money behind.
This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: Cowboys, K Brandon Aubrey should agree to this contract extension