The Cowboys announced a six-year contract extension for receiver Miles Austin Thursday afternoon.
The deal is reportedly worth $57 million.
It's the culmination of rags to riches story for Austin who signed with the Cowboys as an unwanted undrafted free agent out of tiny Monmouth College in 2006. He toiled in relative obscurity as a bit player with the Cowboys until a breakout season in 2009 when he caught 81 passes for 1,320 yards and 11 touchdowns.
He has replaced the disappointing Roy Williams as the team's go to receiver and he is now considered one of league's top game breakers because of his dynamic run after catch ability.
"It feels great to be wanted by this team because I want to be here," said Austin, who made the Pro Bowl last season despite not getting his first start until the fifth game.
Austin, who signed a one-year restricted free-agent offer in June, will now be under the Cowboys' control through 2016. Owner Jerry Jones said they have never been better prepared or better informed in rewarding a lucrative contract to one of his players.
"We know for this significant amount of an agreement this really is a first relative to our relationship with Miles," Jerry Jones said. "I will tell you first hand we are also impressed with the person he is. I've never felt like when we have made this kind of commitment to any individual that we ever have been more informed about what he is as a player and as a person.
"That's a good feeling and made this very comfortable in terms of getting this done."
The Cowboys have always liked what they have seen from Austin and have wanted to ink him to a long-term deal since the end of the 2009 season. Vice-president Stephen Jones said getting a deal done with Austin was the team's top priority.
However, the uncertain labor situation had given them pause. The contract between the league and the players union expires after the season, meaning the the Cowboys have no idea of what the salary cap will look like in the future along with the possibility of a work stoppage.
But Stephen Jones said the time had come to get a deal done.
''We don't know the system we are going to be in," Jones said. "We got that uncertainty out there. We were trying to wait as long as we could to figure out what we were going to be working with in the future. We felt there wasn't going to be a lot more we could find out."
Stephen Jones said the Cowboys knew all the needed to know about Austin, whom he said had an atypical me-first receiver personality and was the anti-diva. Jones said the Cowboys have no concerns about Austin being a one-hit wonder.
"Every thing is he is about would point to that he is not a one-year wonder," Jones said. "Whether it would be his work ethic..he is a great leader. He is the anti wide receiver. He is the anti Diva that you normally don't see with receivers. He is not that type of guy. He is a hard worker. We have all the confidence in the world that he is going to perform year in and year out."
Clarence E. Hill Jr.
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