The Cowboys made it official Monday and applied the franchise tag to Dak Prescott. While we didn't know whether it would be a tag or a deal, we all expected Prescott to be a Cowboy in 2020. What looked less certain on Monday morning was whether he'd have Amari Cooper as his No. 1 receiver. That became clear Monday night when Cooper signed a $100 million deal to return to the Cowboys.
I've been projecting Cooper as a part of the Cowboys since I first built 2020 projections, so what you'll see below won't be a big change from what you've seen already.
Prescott has been a different quarterback when he's had a healthy No. 1 wide receiver and a healthy Ezekiel Elliott. We saw that over a full season in 2019, and he was the second-best quarterback in Fantasy. I project some regression off that career year, but he's still a clear top-three Fantasy quarterback.
I'm not sure it matters all that much for Cooper himself. He's established himself as a very high-end No. 2 receiver for Fantasy purposes. He's likely to have a stretch where looks like one of the best receivers in football and several games where completely disappears. He's done that almost every year of his career.
But there were also a couple of lower-end deals that got done Monday that will influence the Cowboys offense. Blake Jarwin signed to stay in Dallas for three years and Randall Cobb left for Houston. The Jarwin deal likely means Jason Witten isn't returning. Between Witten and Cobb, the Cowboys lost 166 targets from their 2019 team. Jarwin is in an excellent spot to receive a chunk of those.
If you're looking for a baseline for Jarwin's 16-game expectation in 2020, a good place to start might be his career numbers. He's caught 58 of 77 targets for 672 yards and six touchdowns. As you'll see below, I cut into that efficiency pretty considerably, but the numbers you see below are also enough to rank Jarwin inside my top 12 tight ends.
Here are my current Cowboys' projections as of March 17:
