The Dallas Cowboys may not take the field Saturday for practice but that hasn’t stopped them from handling business off of it. After freeing up $3.25 million in cap space with the release of Gerald McCoy earlier this week the Cowboys are converting $8.9 million of Tyron Smith’s salary into a signing bonus, creating an additional $7.1 million worth of wiggle room with the voided year added.
The void year acts simply as a placeholder to spread the proration of the bonus over five seasons’ cap instead of just the four remaining on Smith’s deal. Smith will still be a free agent in 2024 under his current deal.
The Cowboys converted $8.9M of OT Tyron Smith base salary into a signing bonus, per source. That clears $6.675M in cap space for Dallas to work with this year (unless a void year was added, which would bring it $7.12M).
Cap flexibility for free agents or in-season management.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) August 22, 2020
The move is mostly about carrying over cap space for 2021 as the Cowboys are facing a potential $37.7 million dollar franchise tag number if a long-term deal for quarterback Dak Prescott isn’t reached, especially with the cap expected to take a dip due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Please stop don't connect what the Cowboys did with Tyron Smith's restructure to Clowney or Earl Thomas. It's not that. It's about 2021 cap space more than anything else.
— Todd Archer (@toddarcher) August 22, 2020
By restructuring Tyron Smith’s deal, his proration numbers are now:
2020: $5.2 million
2021: $3.5 million
2022-24: $1.78 millionNot really adding much dead money on the back end of the deal that would make a significant difference.
— Todd Archer (@toddarcher) August 22, 2020
Although Smith has missed three games in each of the last four seasons the Cowboys are showing great confidence in him going forward with this move. Smith signed a ten-year, $109 million dollar deal with $40 million in guarantees back in 2014. He was set to make $10 million in base salary before the restructure.
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