👋 Good morning! You have successfully made it to Friday. I just wanted to let you know that you did it. Whatever conflict, troubles, stress, or drama you experienced this week at work, at home, or at a Coldplay concert, it’s all behind you now. The weekend is here. Have a great one! — Bobby Karalla

Now that I’ve spent almost a year working pretty closely with people who cover the Cowboys, it all makes sense to me. I finally understand why Jeff Cavanaugh is the way he is.

Jerry Jones doesn’t enjoy making stuff easy, does he?

There is absolutely no reason Micah Parsons shouldn’t already have a contract signed, sealed, and delivered. Whether it was this summer, last summer, or anytime in between, Parsons should be locked in, his deal done and dusted. Instead, he’s going on wrestling podcasts wearing giant hats wondering aloud what the heck is going on.

Clarence Hill transcribed his appearance and added some more analysis on our site yesterday. Fitting timing on that one, Chill, because just a few hours after he wrote that story, TJ Watt signed an extension with the Steelers to — you guessed it — become the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL. Awesome!

Jerry Jones does this all the time, with every good player the Cowboys draft. That wouldn’t be too big of an issue if the Cowboys didn’t actually almost always hit on their first-round picks. But they do! They’re very good at drafting good players in the first round! And they’re even better at waiting until the last second to pay their guys, which means they always need to pay them more than they could have had they signed them a year (or more) earlier.

The NFL salary cap is too complicated and too weird to constantly play games like this. The Cowboys never have enough cap space to meaningfully improve the team in free agency, which means they need to draft well. They do draft well, which means they need to pay a lot of guys. They usually do pay guys, but they always wait too long, which only makes it tougher the next time around to add guys in free agency. This is such a self-imposed, wholly unnecessary problem.

As Jeff said the other day, Jerry and the Boys should already be working on Tyler Smith’s contract extension, but nope! Check this space one year from today to see how those negotiations are going.

Last night the DLLS Mavs crew unveiled its top-10 “what ifs?” in Dallas Mavericks history. SPOILER ALERT: No. 1 on our list was Steve Nash. What if Mark Cuban and the Mavs would’ve re-signed him instead of letting him walk to Phoenix for nothing? It was a devastating mistake at the time and it only got worse in the years to follow.

Dirk’s story still had a happy ending at least, although it took seven brutal years after Nash’s departure to see Nowitzki finally lift the Larry O’Brien. But we all wonder how many more he would’ve won had he played the rest of his prime with Nash. If anything, he’s certainly still gonna win one at some point. I think they might’ve been able to win two or even three. But we’ll never know! Check out the rest of the show and enjoy!

The homestretch of the MLB season starts today! The Rangers are one game under-.500 and still 3.5 games out of the last Wild Card spot. Be sure to check out our next Rangers show, a Sunday postgame after their series finale against the mighty Detroit Tigers. Later this afternoon, though, Jeff and Rhads got you covered with a mini-pod to get you ready for the series and the rest of the season.

Sam Nestler is calling now that Mavrik Bourque might get a huge opportunity this year under new coach Glen Gulutzan. Will he deliver?

WNBA All-Star week has already given us so much great stuff, including from Paige. (Also… Current Wing talking about a future Wing?? 👀)

Be sure to subscribe to our shows wherever you listen to your podcasts. Traffic can be the worst, and one of the best ways I get through it is by listening to the audio versions of our DLLS shows. You should, too!

Bobby Karalla
DLLS Sports Head of Content​
[email protected]