Cowboys restructured Sean Lee's contract ***MERGED ***

[Toruk_Makto]

You say it doesn't work but it hasn't ever been done and you are afraid to try it

What you're advocating for is big free agent spending funded through restructures.

What part of big free agent spending isn't correlated to winning don't you understand?

 

[Verdict]

Cap questions aside, we go through the same cycle every offseason around here. The team has made it really clear how it intends to use VFA under the current regime. We try to sign our own players. We definitely sign our own very good players. When we're apart on our own players, we let them test the market and hope they give us right of first refusal to match. If they get offers we don't want to match, we let them walk. We then bring in VFAs on value contracts after the first 3-4 days of the open market to fill gaps in the lineups. We then draft for (more or less) the best players available. We trust our young players to fill key roles where necessary. If we don't like our situation, we bring in street FAs and carpet bomb positions with CFAs heading into camp. If we still don't like it, we flip low-round picks to fill remaining holes heading into the season.

The pattern has been clear for 3-4 years, now. The team comes out and says so every offseason. They redo contracts when they need money to work the pattern. That's all. Yet still fans expect them to go bonkers in VFA and lament how snug we are against the cap. Not sure what they're not seeing that it's a new surprise every time it rolls around, yet every March it's like Stephen Jones is doing that thing where he pretends there's a stain on their shirt and flips their nose with his finger and they fall for it and get angry about it. Over and over and over. It'd be amusing if it didn't induce headaches.

You are exactly correct on what our philosophy is. I agree that retaining our own players (who are a known quantity) is a good idea when they are worth it, and being frugal in free agency is what we willl likely be, and what we should probably do.

If we had to restructure players, we have probably restructured the right players. It is encouraging that we haven't restructured Dez who is already under performing, or Witten who is beyond his prime. This may indicate we are leaving our options open to move on from them. I would no be opposed to us drafting an impact tight end and moving on from Witten. Better to save the cap space there and keep Romo than give Romo away for nothing and piss off the cap space wasted on Witten. We also haven't restructured Crawford, and I am thankful of that.

All of that is relatively good news. What I am not enamored with about is us being tight against the cap every year. We seem to think we are outsmarting the league by doing our contracts differently which are designed to be restructured, but we are last in the league nearly every year and have to restructure just to get under the cap. We want to be frugal, and should be, but in reality we don't have the cap room to make any splashes without mortgaging our future. It is not the same to but a car using your credit card and aving the money in the bank to pay cash for it. Other teams pay for their players with cash and we use our credit card (restructuring). This isn't a great plan and I wish they would get away from this practice except in unusual circumstances.

 

[Nightman]

What you're advocating for is big free agent spending funded through restructures.

What part of big free agent spending isn't correlated to winning don't you understand?

Why do you assume they will always pick the wrong players? I don't see you advocating skipping the draft because of DLaw, RGregory, Mo, Escobar etc....

Big stars, some from trades, some FAs worked for NE, SEA, DEN and NYG(last year improved from 30th to 2nd on D)

 

[Idgit]

You are exactly correct on what our philosophy is. I agree that retaining our own players (who are a known quantity) is a good idea when they are worth it, and being frugal in free agency is what we willl likely be, and what we should probably do.

If we had to restructure players, we have probably restructured the right players. It is encouraging that we haven't restructured Dez who is already under performing, or Witten who is beyond his prime. This may indicate we are leaving our options open to move on from them. I would no be opposed to us drafting an impact tight end and moving on from Witten. Better to save the cap space there and keep Romo than give Romo away for nothing and piss off the cap space wasted on Witten. We also haven't restructured Crawford, and I am thankful of that.

All of that is relatively good news. What I am not enamored with about is us being tight against the cap every year. We seem to think we are outsmarting the league by doing our contracts differently which are designed to be restructured, but we are last in the league nearly every year and have to restructure just to get under the cap. We want to be frugal, and should be, but in reality we don't have the cap room to make any splashes without mortgaging our future. It is not the same to but a car using your credit card and aving the money in the bank to pay cash for it. Other teams pay for their players with cash and we use our credit card (restructuring). This isn't a great plan and I wish they would get away from this practice except in unusual circumstances.

We basically structure the deals to fin inside the parameters the rest of the league uses. Then we look at the deals that are performing well and convert them as we need cap space, eating the underperforming deals as we go. If we're snug against the cap, it's because we've been fairly careful about not converting some deals that don't look good for us right now.

Our biggest hits in recent years have been the Carr/Witten/Dez/Romo deals. You can't blame the Cowboys for having a big number on their franchise QB in his 30's. Other than that, though, they have been leaving the Carr and Dez deals alone. Our dead money numbers aren't bad these days. Basically, we're signing our own, absorbing the deals that look less promising, restructuring the ones that look promising as we go in order to free up space to sign more of our own players. We'll get a bump when Romo's off the roster for a year or two until we have to extend Dak. This means there have been a couple expensive deals we've had to absorb, along with having a huge piece of our cap on the sideline the last two years due to injury/Dak's performance. Other than that, though, we've been pretty responsible.

The only real beef I've got with our cap allocation is that we spend $2 on offense for every $1 of defense and expect to be able to stop Aron Rodgers that way.

 

[rkell87]

That's brilliant, except for the fact that the Salary Cap was put in place 23 years ago and the team has only had one year of "cap hell", that was purely because Aikman forced his own release and the team decided to take the cap hit in one year.

So for one year out of 23, you are spot on.

Nah that year we had dead money for (iirc) miles Austin, jay Ratliff, and Demarcus ware was pretty hellish

 

[thisiscowboyscountry]

This is probably just enough to sign some combination of two of the following, Church, Carr, Claiborne, Wilcox, McClain, and Williams. Its pretty clear without restructuring Dez and Crawford there is little room for anyone else.....Cowboys are going to lose a lot of players in free agency, but if they're able to retain a corner and safety it will atleast give them some flexibility in the draft.

 

[jblaze2004]

more bargain hunting. How are we always strapped again the cap. We haven't been big spenders in FA in a while. I guess the home grown contracts we hand out are killing us?

 

[Kaiser]

Nah that year we had dead money for (iirc) miles Austin, jay Ratliff, and Demarcus ware was pretty hellish

You must be thinking of something else. Cutting DeMarcus Ware saved us 7 Million in 2014 and 14 Million in 2015.

Cutting Ratliff saved us 1 Million off the cap in 2014.

Cutting Miles Austin saved us 5 Million in 2014 but incurred a cap hit of 5 Million in 2015. In 2015 we went deep in the playoffs so it couldn't have been too hellish.

 

[Hoofbite]

Obviously. Who would actually believe $9M is enough to do anything "crazy" in free agency?

 

[Hoofbite]

For those needing the info:

http://sportsday.***BANNED-URL***/d.../2017/03/06/cowboys-money-problem-free-agency

Is everyone else actually signing in for the articles on this site?

 

[Floatyworm]

Maybe not quite so dead in free agency after all....

Or maybe panicking after getting gutted??? 6 players lost....

Romo
Church
Wilcox
McClain
T.Williams
Claiborne

 

[OldCoach]

Maybe not quite so dead in free agency after all....

Or maybe panicking after getting gutted??? 6 players lost....

Romo
Church
Wilcox
McClain
T.Williams
Claiborne

Probably trying to resign a corner and maybe Wilcox.

 

[rkell87]

You must be thinking of something else. Cutting DeMarcus Ware saved us 7 Million in 2014 and 14 Million in 2015.

Cutting Ratliff saved us 1 Million off the cap in 2014.

Cutting Miles Austin saved us 5 Million in 2014 but incurred a cap hit of 5 Million in 2015. In 2015 we went deep in the playoffs so it couldn't have been too hellish.

These numbers directly lead us to not resign Murray which lead to a 4 win season which was hell to me. These numbers were counting against the cap years after the player was cut and this is just one year, we had multiple where significant cap space was used up by players no longer on the team.

Ware $8,571,500
Ratliff $6,928,000
Austin $2,749,400

 

[AdamJT13]

For those needing the info:

http://sportsday.***BANNED-URL***/d.../2017/03/06/cowboys-money-problem-free-agency

Yet another example of someone who doesn't understand how the cap works.

 

[ActualCowboysFan]

more bargain hunting. How are we always strapped again the cap. We haven't been big spenders in FA in a while. I guess the home grown contracts we hand out are killing us?

Biggest cap hit in Romo
Highest paid tackle
Highest paid center
Highest paid receiver
Highest paid tight end

 

[gmoney112]

Is everyone else actually signing in for the articles on this site?

Open it in "incognito" mode.

It's not worth reading anyway.

 

[Toruk_Makto]

We basically structure the deals to fin inside the parameters the rest of the league uses. Then we look at the deals that are performing well and convert them as we need cap space, eating the underperforming deals as we go. If we're snug against the cap, it's because we've been fairly careful about not converting some deals that don't look good for us right now.

Our biggest hits in recent years have been the Carr/Witten/Dez/Romo deals. You can't blame the Cowboys for having a big number on their franchise QB in his 30's. Other than that, though, they have been leaving the Carr and Dez deals alone. Our dead money numbers aren't bad these days. Basically, we're signing our own, absorbing the deals that look less promising, restructuring the ones that look promising as we go in order to free up space to sign more of our own players. We'll get a bump when Romo's off the roster for a year or two until we have to extend Dak. This means there have been a couple expensive deals we've had to absorb, along with having a huge piece of our cap on the sideline the last two years due to injury/Dak's performance. Other than that, though, we've been pretty responsible.

The only real beef I've got with our cap allocation is that we spend $2 on offense for every $1 of defense and expect to be able to stop Aron Rodgers that way.

Thank you sir.

The thing the restructure everything crowd doesn't understand is that it ties you to contracts and people longer than you'd like. If a deal isn't preventing you from signing someone you like you old off. If you need the space because something becomes available... You make a move....like they did with Hardy. Like they were allegedly prepared to do with Jpp.

 

[Toruk_Makto]

These numbers directly lead us to not resign Murray which lead to a 4 win season which was hell to me. These numbers were counting against the cap years after the player was cut and this is just one year, we had multiple where significant cap space was used up by players no longer on the team.

Ware $8,571,500
Ratliff $6,928,000
Austin $2,749,400

Ware, Ratliff and Austin were not the reason we didn't sign Murray.

Not having Murray was not the reason we won 4 games.

So what I'm saying is that I agree with everything you said only the exact opposite.

 

[okstateCowboy]

The official store of the Dallas Cowboys!

 

[AdamJT13]

The thing the restructure everything crowd doesn't understand is that it ties you to contracts and people longer than you'd like.

Except that it doesn't. If you're "tied" to a player longer than you'd like, then the problem was with the original contract, not anything to do with restructuring it.