RUMOR: Dallas Cowboys Expected To Part Ways With $136 Million Wide Receiver CeeDee Lamb

CeeDee Lamb (Photo via Imagn Images)

Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb is being floated as a potential trade piece following the team’s win against the Las Vegas Raiders on Monday night.

Owner Jerry Jones has shown that he has no qualms trading big-name players, having dealt Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers. While his relationship with Lamb isn’t thought to be as frosty, the wide receiver isn’t performing quite up to the standard he set for himself, having made some notable drops.

At the same time, George Pickens has emerged as the top receiving option for the Cowboys.

Pickens registered nine catches for 144 yards and a touchdown against Vegas on Monday, overshadowing Lamb’s 66-yard/1 TD outing.

“I’ve never seen a performance like that,” Jones said of Pickens after the game, per NBC. “It was poetic the way that he was making those moves out there. It was like he was in an opera or something out there. A ballet.”

The former Pittsburgh Steelers star was indeed graceful in the way he evaded the Raiders’ defense, a far cry from that crash-out he had against the Chicago Bears earlier in the year. Overall, he has been the more productive receiver of the two in all pertinent categories for the Cowboys this season.

Could Jerry Jones Trade CeeDee Lamb To Kee George Pickens?

CeeDee Lamb & George Pickens on the practice field (Photo via Twitter)

The Cowboys, who surprisingly released one of their young wideouts to accommodate Lamb’s return from injury last month, will likely want to keep Pickens past the end of the season. According to Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk, Jones might be forced into trading Lamb to create cap space that would allow him to extend the former Georgia star.

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“There’s another wrinkle to consider, one for which the Cowboys have some precedent. After the Cowboys traded a first-round pick to the Raiders for receiver Amari Cooper during the 2018 season, they let Cooper finish his rookie contract in 2019 before signing him to a five-year, $100 million deal. And, after paying out a total of $40 million in 2020 and 2021, they traded him to make way for Lamb,” Florio explained.

“And so the overall collection of outcomes has to include the possibility of eventually trading Lamb and keeping Pickens.

“It sounds crazy on the surface, especially in the short term. A pre-June 1 trade would come with a total cap charge of $42.8 million, while also eliminating his $38.6 million cap number for next season. The more likely approach will be to exercise the automatic restructure option, knocking Lamb’s cap number down by $18 million or so and kicking the rest of it into future years.”

Florio added that should the Cowboys figure out a way to keep both players, they would likely face the same situation in 2027 or 2028.

Jerry Jones will probably not worry about that if he manages to pull it off.