Agents have been a part of the business of sport for some time. They give the workforce—the players—someone with business savvy that’s on their side, rather than the business owner’s. The most important time for an NFL player’s agent is when said player is up for a new contract or extension. Those negotiations are where agents make their cake. Unless their client plays for Jerry Jones’ Dallas Cowboys.
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We saw earlier this offseason how Jones was put off by the fact that superstar edge rusher Micah Parsons wouldn’t sign off on a deal that the owner and player had discussed without Parsons’ high-powered agent, David Mulugheta of Athletes First. Parsons simply wanted his agent to look it over; he’s not a business major after all. But Jones was not interested in negotiating with Mulugheta, or any agent, apparently.
Jones believes he’s still in the age of handshake deals and spit-shakes. But players in the modern NFL are more self-aware than they have ever been, especially when it comes to their money. Guys like Zack Martin, a perennial All-Pro guard for the Dallas Cowboys from 2014-2024, who didn’t mind negotiating without an agent, are becoming few and far between. Martin, for his part, believed that Jones really “took care” of his players when it came to negotiations.
“My contract stuff came up a couple of years ago, that’s when I started having one-on-one conversations with him. Got to know him a little bit better, got closer with him. … It was just us in the room several times, we’re sitting talking through our contracts. And you’ve kind of got to pinch yourself. You’re like, ‘I’m negotiating with this oil tycoon billionaire.’ But no, it’s cool, man, he takes care of us.”
A professional athlete with no business or contract negotiation background sitting in a boardroom negotiating a multi-million dollar deal with an experienced “oil tycoon billionaire?” Just saying it, you can see why most players would want someone there to at least whisper in their ear. An owner pushing for a player to have less representation is a clear red flag.
To Jones’ credit, however, the contract Martin is talking about is the final contract he signed with Dallas in 2023. It turned out to be very lucrative for Martin. He held out in 2023 and eventually got a two-year, $36 million extension that represented a raise of nearly $10 million per season. It bumped him from the eighth-highest-paid guard in football to the third.
Parsons’ and Martin’s negotiations had one major difference
However, there is one important caveat that differentiates the Parsons and Martin situations. Martin was 33 years old, a decade into his NFL career, and negotiating his second non-rookie contract. Parsons was trying to negotiate his first post-rookie contract.
So early in his career, it’s understandable that he wanted guidance from someone like Mulugheta, who has done nothing but make his clients rich since emerging as a top sports agent. Martin broke down why the “circumstances” of the deal he negotiated by himself with Jones were different than those in Parsons’ case.
“I was in a little bit of a different circumstance, because it was my second [deal]. When I did my first deal, my agent was obviously very involved. This was kind of at the end of my career; I had a few years left, and I was trying to get a little extra on the back end. And in my mind, I thought it was pretty cut and dry.”
But hey, the Cowboys have been one of the most fun teams to watch in the NFL this year. Any Super Bowl aspirations are likely overblown because of possibly the worst defense in the league (I guess they did need Parsons after all, huh?), but their offense might be the best in football.
And we have to begrudgingly admit that much of that offensive success has to do with Jones. He sealed those CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott deals (even if they were handled poorly) and also brought in Javonte Williams and George Pickens in very shrewd moves.
