Dallas Cowboys ready to intensify Amari Cooper contract talks amid CBA setback

INDIANAPOLIS — Jerry Jones boarded a team bus Thursday with a group of Cowboys reporters and sank into a tan leather chair. He opened an 80-minute interview with an 825-word uninterrupted synopsis, discussing various implications surrounding a proposed NFL collective bargaining agreement. It’s the right deal, he said, at the right time. Even if partly inconvenient for the 2020 Cowboys. NFL players are expected to ratify a new CBA as early as next week, effectively keeping stadium lights on through the 2030 season. Jones said that he was among the club owners who voted in favor of the potential deal but acknowledged it would complicate efforts to re-sign wide receiver Amari Cooper. Hours later, the Cowboys met with Cooper’s representatives here at the NFL combine, a source said. The Cowboys want Cooper back. Given the interest he’s expressed in the past, they’ll likely get him. But the effort for Dallas does not become easier under the proposed CBA. If the 2020 league year no longer marks the final season of the current CBA, clubs will lose their ability to designate two tags — franchise and transition — on impending free agents in the same year. Prescott is a lock to receive the franchise tag by the March 12 tag deadline if no extension is reached by then. Since the transition tag is likely off the table for Cooper, the Cowboys won’t be able to match a team’s offer to sign Cooper in free agency. That matching option is what the transition tag affords. “It removes a very strategic thing for us,” Jones said, “and that is we only have one [tag] — we lose the transition. Strategically, that was really thought of a lot because with our negotiations with Dak and our negotiations with Cooper. … It’s what it is. We just have to figure out a way to do it. “That was one of the reasons I’ve said was why I could have conceived not doing [the CBA]. There’s no question it’s going to prove bigger angst, but we’re going to be better off for it, and I think we’ll be better off for it as a team. But there’s a little more challenge here on our part to not have both tags.”