The time has come to build a Bank of America on Zack Martin's front lawn.
Following a failed attempt in 2017 to settle terms on a new deal with the veteran guard, the Dallas Cowboys again face an offseason with him as their financial headliner. No one in their right mind wants to see such a talent walk out the door, and both owner Jerry Jones and EVP Stephen Jones are confident a deal will get done in the near future. Martin himself is optimistic as well, but admits it's no longer in the forefront of his mind now that offseason conditioning is in full swing with players preparing to kick things up a notch in OTAs.
“I think it’s been better after we’ve gotten into the facility with all the guys,” he said from the Cowboys' charity home run derby, via 247Sports. “I really don’t think about it now, because I’m with those guys working out and kind of back to normal. We’ll see. Hopefully it gets done.
"We’ll see where it goes.”
The closing statement there does add a bit of ominous tone, one the Cowboys should immediately put to bed. Martin has routinely stated Dallas is where he wants to be. He tripled down on that after to the conclusion of the 2017 regular season and admits there was progress made in the contract talks a few months prior, before the two sides tabled the discussions for a revisit this offseason.
"We'll go back and revisit that," Martin said, via The Dallas Morning News. "I was lucky enough to be drafted here and I want to be here for my career. Hopefully we can get something worked out. I think we had good talks [before the 2017 season], but at that time I didn't want it to linger during the season and think about it.
"Kind of held it and played this year and hopefully we can talk and get something done in this offseason."
The Cowboys exercised the fifth-year option on Martin's contract but that expires after the 2018 season which would make him an unrestricted free agent. A terrifying thought considering Martin has been nothing short of amazing since being drafted with the 16th-overall pick in 2014, and much to the chagrin of those who beat the table to see the team select CFL quarterback Johnny Manziel instead. Martin has not missed a single game in his first four years in the NFL en route to four pro bowl appearances and four All-Pro nods.
He's arguably the best right guard in the NFL which is a statement bolstered by his eye-popping numbers. In 67 starts, including the postseason, he's allowed only seven sacks on the quarterback. For contrast, backup lineman Chaz Green allowed six sacks in one game this past season.
Even more impressive is Martin's ability to dominate without drawing a flag. Now entering his fifth year, he's only been penalized a total of nine times -- with none of those flags having occurred in 2017. These are alien numbers even when they aren't weighed against others at the position, and it'll cost the Cowboys a pretty penny along with some really unattractive silver dollars to make sure he stays put in the Metroplex. The holdup here is likely the guaranteed money, with Martin's new deal prepped to set the bar for every other NFL player at the position.
The bottom line is when there are this many commas involved, there's bound to be more back-and-forth than usual.
The highest paid guard in the league right now is Kevin Zeitler of the Cleveland Browns, who signed a five-year, $60M contract extension one year ago. Those who don't expect the deal on Martin to surpass that would be wise to realize Zeitler gave up more sacks in his first 2.5 seasons than Martin has in his entire career. He's also never mounted a campaign in which he didn't land a penalty of some sort, another nod to the greatness of the Cowboys' lineman. And while none of this is to say Zeitler isn't great at what he does, it is to put into perspective just how elite Martin is.
And his coming payday will reflect it in spades.
The next three highest-paid guards in the NFL are as follows, according to Overthecap.com:
Gabe Jackson (Oakland Raiders) - 5-year, $56M with $16.5M guaranteed
David DeCastro (Pittsburgh Steelers) - 5-year, $50M with $16M guaranteed
Trai Turner (Carolina Panthers) - 4-year, $45M with $15.8 guaranteed
Those are some hefty deals for some very good players. That said, DeCastro is the only All-Pro in the bunch and Martin has twice as many nods as him in that category and one more pro bowl appearance. Neither Zeitler nor Jackson have a single pro bowl to their name and were able to land mammoth extensions. And with the left guard position currently in flux for the Cowboys, the last thing they're willing to do is allow a cavernous void to open at the right guard -- which could set the team back in a big way after 2018.
The team made both Travis Frederick and Tyron Smith the highest paid at their respective position when the time came for their extensions, the former landing a six-year, $56M deal while the latter secured an awe-inspiring eight-year extension worth an enormous $97.6M. Between the two, that's an average salary -- restructures notwithstanding -- of roughly $10.75M, which gives a low bar for what Martin's new annual salary could look like from the outset.
Zeitler himself is set to make $12.4M in 2018, so the projected numbers are now beginning to take shape on Martin. Expect him to likely hit an average salary of no lower than $11M but a five-year deal with that figure still sets him below Zeitler and even Jackson, something that's not expected to happen. The Cowboys have nearly $20M in projected cap space and they'll swing the kitchen sink here, so a deal on Martin buoys a bit to the realm of a five-year, $63M with approximately $17M in guarantees.
That bumps to just under $75M on the whole if they stretch it to a six-year agreement ($22.5M guaranteed), which is more in tune with the extended length on both Frederick and Smith. This prediction is right in line with his market value, which Spotrac lists as five years at $64M with an average salary of $12.8M annually. That would make him the highest paid guard in the NFL and an exceedingly happy man, ready to continue dominating for the Cowboys through the 2022 season -- assuming it's America's Team who ultimately forks over the dough.
They may even give him a bonus for saving them from the nuclear fallout that would've occurred had they drafted Manziel. Okay so that last part won't actually happen, but it should definitely be worth something.
