Here's how the rollover works, to my knowledge, in a crude example. I might have this wrong, so someone with a better cap understanding can correct me.
Let's start with a few premises:
- The 2020 salary cap is $100MM
- The 2021 salary cap is $105MM
- All Cowboys players, besides Crawford, have the same cap hit in 2020 and 2021
- Crawford is an $8MM cap hit just for 2020 as his contract expires in 2020.
- Cowboys are using all $100MM of the cap this year.
Let's say they decide to then cut Crawford. His cut results in the Cowboys cap now being $92MM. They don't spend that $8MM in space and roll it over to 2021. In that sense, the Cowboys "cap" in 2021 isn't $105MM, it's $113MM.
If they don't cut Crawford, the cap is just $105MM.
Now, in both cases, since Crawford is gone, the Cowboys only cap commitments both years is $92MM. So under the rollover plan, the Cowboys would have created $21MM in cap space for 2021. In the non-cut scenario, the Cowboys only have $13MM in cap space for 2021.
Therefore, there is an incentive to cutting Crawford from a cap perspective for 2021. The question the team has to ask themselves is Crawford (or any player for that matter) more valuable than the cap space they could have in the following year by utilizing the rollovers? I suspect the Cowboys say yes, but personally, I am not so sure.