When the deal was originally announced, quarterback Andy Dalton was reported to be able to make up to $7 million in his one-year deal with the Dallas Cowboys. Recently released by the Cincinnati Bengals, the Katy, TX native was put out to pasture …
When the deal was originally announced, quarterback Andy Dalton was reported to be able to make up to $7 million in his one-year deal with the Dallas Cowboys. Recently released by the Cincinnati Bengals, the Katy, TX native was put out to pasture following the big waves of free agency and after the NFL draft, limiting his opportunities to latch on as a starter somewhere around the league.
Despite Dallas having a young starter who has yet to miss a game in his four years, Dalton chose to come to Dallas and the $7 million possibility seemed — from the outside at least — to be enticing for someone who was on the Bengals’ books to make $17 million in 2020. The guaranteed money was just $3 million, but surely the incentive portion of the agreement would have the 2020 cap impact higher than that, and there’d be a real possibility Dalton could see more than just the guaranteed portion.
Nope.
It really is a spectacular agreement for the Cowboys who landed themselves a starting-capable backup with nine years of skins on the wall for not much more money than they were set to pay the woefully inexperienced Cooper Rush.
Rush was released on Monday, with the Cowboys now having four quarterbacks among their 90-man offseason roster. Ben DiNucci, drafted in the seventh-round out of James Madison, is now the developmental project quarterback. Clayton Thorson, on the practice squad in 2019, will be the hopeful camp arm hoping to somehow wow a coaching staff around the league to give him a chance to be their wing-and-a-prayer.
Rush, by virtue of his original-round restricted free agent tender was going to make $2.1 million in 2020 if he had made the roster. Dalton’s just $900,000 above that, has 70 career wins and a winning record, and thanks to a creative structure of the contract, is only going to make more than that if Prescott misses a significant portion of the 2020 season.
Signing Bonus and Base
According to Clarence Hill of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Dalton’s signing bonus is $1 million, with a base salary of $2 million.
The signing bonus is paid in advance, so technically Dalton’s weekly pay checks (base salary is spread out evenly across 17 weeks) will be less than Rush’s were going to be.
Incentives
It is here that I thought the Cowboys would have taken care of Dalton. NFL contracts have two types of incentives, likely to be earned (LTBE) and not likely to be earned (NLTBE). They are calculated on the salary cap in two very different ways.
LTBE incentives are stat achievements the player did in the previous season. As they were reached, the NFL’s CBA considers it “likely” the player will reach them again. NLTBE is the exact opposite, stats the player didn’t achieve the prior season.
LTBE counts against the cap before the season, NLTBE doesn’t.
It was expected by many (read, me- the author of this piece) that a significant portion of Dalton’s $4 million worth of incentives would be based on whether or not he actually plays.
That part was correct, but it appears the Cowboys were ridiculously crafty in how they defined playing.
Dalton started 13 games for the Bengals in 2019. If the Cowboys were to give him, say $2 million in game-day roster incentives, 13/16th of that $2 million would have counted against the cap as LTBE. The other 3/16th would be NLTBE, and would only hit the cap at the end of the year were Dalton to play in, up to those 3 contests.
But the Cowboys didn’t use game-day roster bonuses. Instead, according to Cowboys Maven’s Mike Fisher, they said Dalton would have to play at least 50% of the snaps in order to reach his first bonus level.
OK, but Dalton did play over 50% of the Bengals’ snaps in 2019.
Right, so the Cowboys added the playoffs to the equation. The 2-14 Bengals and the 8-8 Cowboys both missed the playoffs. That stipulation, regardless of which team’s record was used to calculate, means that the entire bonus structure will be considered NLTBE, therefore not counting against the cap.
Not only that, Dalton will have to play the equivalent of 8 regular season games AND appear in the majority of playoff snaps in order to make a cent above the $3 million.
That’s just ingenuous deal making by the Cowboys.
According to Fisher, there are four tiers of bonuses for Dalton.
- 50% of regular season and playoff snaps
- Tier 2 percentage of snaps
- Tier 3 percentage of snaps
- Super Bowl participation
Dalton signed with the Cowboys just two days after hitting the open market. Certainly his agent tested the waters and there were likely other opportunities that would have gotten him closer to starting in 2020 than what he will get in Dallas.
There of course is the hopefully remote possibility the Cowboys and Prescott are unable to work out a long-term deal and there is a chance to impress the Dallas staff that Dalton should be the successor in that worst-case scenario. Most likely though, Dalton will be an injury-slash-mopup duty guy who hopes to impress enough to get the opportunity to sign as a starter elsewhere in 2021.
And if that’s the case, if Dalton can command a starter’s salary anywhere near what Teddy Bridgewater got from Carolina this offseason, the Cowboys will be in line to get a third-round compensatory pick for their troubles in 2022. A $15 million average would be worth that for Dallas in the comp equation. $11 million or more would still be a fourth-round value.
Imagine paying $900,000 for a starting-quality backup upgrade in a season a team hopes to compete for a Super Bowl, and then getting a third-round comp pick later on down the line because of it.
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