The Dallas Cowboys are on the verge of having a bunch of salary cap space for 2023 and beyond. Right now, Dallas sits at $10.5 million of available space. This is after they signed their entire 2023 draft class ahead of the onset of OTAs. With all of their draft picks inked already, the Cowboys have a sizable amount of wiggle room for any summer signings they are interested in making.
And that amount is going to more than double in about 48 hours. That’s because the Cowboys have yet to receive the cap space from the organizations decision to part ways with running back Ezekiel Elliott, adding another $10.9 million in space for a grand total of $21.4 million.
Elliott was released as a June 1 cut; a favor move each team can do twice each offseason. It doesn’t do much for the club at the time, but rather it allows a player to test the open market while other teams still have free agency dollars at their disposal.
NFL accounting is mostly funny money, with bonus amounts being allocated across multiple years. This allows teams to spend way above the hard cap amount on salaries each spring. A $20 million signing bonus may be paid to a player at the time they were signed, but it is spread out evenly across up to five years so the cap hit isn’t outrageous.
Teams are also allowed to have option bonuses and also restructure base salaries into bonuses which can also be spread out, moving cap hits to later in the deal’s structure when they will take up a lower percentage of the ever-increasing salary cap.
While those moves benefit the team and make no difference to the player, a June 1 move is the exact opposite. The team doesn’t see the cap savings from the release until June 2, but the player has freedom to shop his services.
On June 2, Elliott’s $10.9 million base salary will be removed from the Cowboys’ ledger, leaving only his $5.82 million bonus allocation on this year’s books. After June 1, bonus money allocated to future years will accelerate onto the next year’s cap.
Elliott will cost the Cowboys $6.04 million in 2024 despite being long gone.
If Dallas had released Elliott outright earlier in the spring, they would have gotten the relief of the $10.9 million immediately but his $6.04 million would have accelerated onto the 2023 cap, netting Dallas $4.86 million of savings this year immediately and avoiding any dead money next year.
Teams make conscious decisions each offseason whether they want to bite the bullet in its entirety or spread the pain out over multiple seasons. Leftover cap space is rolled over to the next season, so while it might look like Dallas did themselves a disservice with their decision, it’s really moving money from one had to another and giving them the option of using that space now.