After the signing of a franchise tag and record-setting kicker contract, all is unseasonably quiet for this time of year on the Dallas Cowboys front.
For a franchise usually working through contract standoffs and offseason histrionics, the quieter-than-the-norm spring is a great turn of events in the eyes of one of the franchise's -- and the NFL's -- all-time greats.
"I think the bigger sign is that it's been a slow, quiet offseason -- the way it needs to be," NFL all-time leading rusher Emmitt Smith told . "Now that we've gotten George Pickens out of the way, quietness is important, because it says the focus is where it needs to be -- on the field."
It's arduous to argue that focusing on football between the lines is a bad thing for a Cowboys club coming off a 7-10 season and infamously having gone without a Super Bowl berth since Smith and Dallas defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers to conclude the 1995 season.
Since then, Dallas has yet to move past the Divisional Round, with offseason drama becoming far more prevalent than postseason glory.
In recent years, star wide receiver CeeDee Lamb had his extension drama bleed into late August, commanding headlines and causing negative buzz through the 2024 offseason.
Dak Prescott didn't sign his most recent extension until the morning of the team's season opener just weeks after Lamb's signing in 2024.
The 2025 offseason was perhaps the worst of it, as Micah Parsons, one of the decade's most talented pass rushers, was traded to the Green Bay Packers following an ugly offseason and summer in which the parties never reached new contract terms.
Perhaps that's why this year's been different, though it hardly began that way.
Brandon Aubrey eventually signed an extension, but not before kicker negotiations drew attention in a true only-with-the-Cowboys news cycle.
More prevalent was working out how to keep George Pickens around. The Cowboys applied the franchise tag and eventually Pickens signed it despite the club stating it would not be working on a long-term extension.
So far so good -- and different in Dallas, though.
It's a breath of fresh air in the eyes of Smith, who once held out into the season as he sought more money from Jerry Jones and the Cowboys.
"It's important for people to know, 'We don't need all that drama.' We're too good of an organization to be dealing with all that drama. Don't need it," Smith said. "Sometimes you have to rise above the fray, and this is one of those times where we need to rise above the fray. Because the last 31 years have not produced the things that we want to see. There's no reason to be having drama when you don't have to. You don't have to create it."
Of course, it's not even June yet. There is ample time for drama to arrive before the season kicks off in September. But the Cowboys' three-time Super Bowl winner is a fan of what he's seen -- and more aptly hasn't seen -- so far.
