Timing is everything, and sometimes it’s nothing at all. After adding Dak Prescott’s sizable one-year cap hit in the form of the franchise tag, and then inking Amari Cooper to a nine-figure deal, one might think the Dallas Cowboys were low on cap space.
When word came down the club had restructured the deals of La’el Collins and Ezekiel Elliott, both just signed last year, all of the comments about having to do that in order to make the moves announced earlier ran rampant. They couldn’t be the furthest things from the truth.
Let's clear something up…
The Cowboys still had $40M in space after tagging Dak. Coop's 1st-year cap hit will be under $10M, possibly well under.
They didn't restructure Zeke/La'el to "pay" Coop.
Very likely something else coming.
— KD Drummond (@KDDrummondNFL) March 17, 2020
Neither player was set to make a boatload of money in base salary in 2020, with each being under $7 million after receiving hefty sums in Year 1 of their deals.
Sure enough, the details came down from ESPN’s Todd Archer; there wasn’t much savings reaped. In fact, they didn’t save any cap space with Elliott’s restructure at all.
The Cowboys restructured the contracts of Ezekiel Elliott and La’el Collins, but gained cap room only from the Collins’ move, opening up $4 million in space by turning $5 million of his 2020 base salary into signing bonus. https://t.co/zjt9qaAX3p
— Todd Archer (@toddarcher) March 17, 2020
Elliott’s restructure could have something to do with the way his future guarantees are set, an agreement made when the contract was signed, or something completely different. Elliott signed a six-year extension for $90 million total last offseason. Collins signed a five-year deal for $50 million total.
Dallas entered the day with around $72 million in cap space under the $198.2 million salary limit for 2020. The Prescott franchise tag soaked up somewhere between $31.5 million and $33 million. If the club structured Cooper’s five-year deal like many other star contracts, his first-year hit is almost guaranteed to be below $10 million.
That left around $30 million in space, meaning the club is around $34 million in space now if they can’t work out a long-term agreement with Prescott.
The club is said to be pursuing Broncos FA CB Chris Harris as a replacement for Byron Jones, who signed with Miami earlier in the day, and is still trying to bring back DE Robert Quinn.
[lawrence-newsletter]