Plan that shows how they could keep Dak, CD and Micah for the next 4 years if they wanted

[Chasing6]

Did the Dak contract include the huge amount they are already in the hook for that has been pushed into void years?

Yes. 4 years $160M may have seemed like a lot at the time, but it was not. Dak would be making $42M this year, and zero on our cap for next year, if GM Jethro did not restructure his contract.

 

[KingCorcoran]

That's far too long to read but just off the title,

I agree they could keep them all but it's not as simple as you're writing out they're going to need to be very careful in structuring these contracts and really Prescott's contract is the only one that would make sense to do first if you wanna keep all those other players if not they need to trade them all blow it up and start over without a quarterback we're not going anywhere for the next three plus years so why keep all those other dudes when you can get maximum trade value right now for any of them and you're right probably cutting and getting rid of Zach Martin and tank...

In my opinion a lot of this stuff gonna happen within a month before the season starts you might see all three signs you could see at least Prescott and lamb signed but everyone thinking this offseason's over just because it hasn't happened yet look what just off the top of my mind Chris Jones did with Kansas City he got signed a week before the season started it literally can happen at any moment and heck if they wanted say they signed those two and then Micah Parsons got off to a tear in the first six weeks of the season and has like 10 sacks already they could sign him during the year can't they or is that against the rules??

Think there might be a rule on when you're allowed to sign new deals or not but I have no idea but yes they could keep them all but I think Prescott is the X Factor all the other chips will fall when they decide what to do with Prescott we cannot operate without a top quarterback and I'm sorry history says they're not easy to find...

The Chiefs didn’t get Jones signed early enough to play in their first regular season game. The Chiefs lost that game. Maybe the Chiefs can horse around like that. The Cowboys can’t. There is no rule against signing your players to extensions. Fans that think Jerry Jones is waiting for Dak, CeeDee and Micah to “prove” their worth are kidding themselves. Dak, CeeDee and Micah are waiting for Jerry Jones to prove himself. No one can blame them for thinking Jerry Jones cannot do what it takes to win a Super Bowl.

 

[JoeKing]

They can pay them but that might not be the wisest thing to do. It doesn't hurt to wait as long as possible if you don't care how much the final bill is.

 

[kskboys]

Of course, DUH. That was never the problem. The problem is forming a super bowl quality team, and that is almost impossible if you pay half your salary cap to 4 players. No matter how you slice it.

 

[ChuckA1]

Yes. 4 years $160M may have seemed like a lot at the time, but it was not. Dak would be making $42M this year, and zero on our cap for next year, if GM Jethro did not restructure his contract.

Didn't they restructure his contract to free up CAP to sign other players? Didn't they have dead money due from other contracts? That's the problem with kicking the can down the road.

Plus, 40 mil WAS a lot four years ago.

 

[BoysForLife]

Awesome. Your next assignment is to give us a detailed analysis showing why we'd want to keep all 3

 

[Bagman]

Question is.......do they WANT TO keep all 3 guys ?

 

[Sandyf]

Nice write-up but there is just one problem.................THEY DON'T WANT TO KEEP DAK ANY LONGER!!!!

Many believe you are wrong. Time will tell.

 

[Chasing6]

Didn't they restructure his contract to free up CAP to sign other players? Didn't they have dead money due from other contracts? That's the problem with kicking the can down the road.

Plus, 40 mil WAS a lot four years ago.

I agree, but some blaming that is Dak's fault and saying he is getting paid too much is ludicrous. That was a GM Jethro decision to allocate it the way he did.

 

[bleachedwheat]

Now that I know you can't push signing bonus back into void years as a lump sum and it has to be prorated over a max of 5 years. I thought I would make another contract the right way and see if it was still feasible to pay this guy.

5yr 300mil- 60m/yr... 250m guaranteed 75m signing bonus
He already has 26m in signing bonus from his last contract that has to be added to this years cap hit, because it's not in the void years. The other 29m, or his base salary this year isn't guaranteed and will just fall off the books when he signs his new contract. The void years will be pushed back behind the new contract with the remainder of 40m in signing bonus from his last contract.

2024
9m in base salary, 15m in new signing bonus, 26m from last contracts signing bonus= 50m cap hit
2025
41m in base salary, 15m in new signing bonus= 56m cap hit
So after two years he is still owed 125m in base salary. 250m(guaranteed) - 75m bonus= 175m-50m in base salary over 24-25 seasons= 125m

2026 Restructure- Base salary still owed 125m, signing bonus 15m/yr over next 3yrs, and the 40m in bonus money from his last contract still in void years.
Convert another 75m of base salary into a signing bonus and spread that over the next 3yrs plus 2yrs of void years. You can only spread a signing bonus over 5 years so that 75m would be 15m/yr. 125m-75m= 50m in base salary remaining.

2026
25m in base salary, 15m in original signing bonus, 15m in new restructure signing bonus= 55m cap hit
2027
25m in base salary, 15m in original signing bonus, 15m in new restructure signing bonus= 55m cap hit

By this year 2028 his guaranteed money will have been paid... base salary 9+41+25+25=100 and signing bonus 75+75=150... 100+150=250m
You could trade him this year or cut him post June 1st and you pretty much have to. He would still have 50m in unguaranteed money on the books.

2028
50m unguaranteed base salary, 15m in original signing bonus, 15m in restructure signing bonus= 80m cap hit

Dak has either been traded, cut, or another contract has been negotiated pushing all this dead cap even further back.

Dead money... 40m from before the new contract, 15m from original signing bonus(last one), 3yrs of 15m restructure bonus= 45m
100m in dead money total.

If he is cut or traded the void years would all accelerate to right now so you would owe 100m in dead money.
Dead money can be paid over 2 seasons.
It would be 50m/yr for 2028 and 2029, You wouldn't have Dak anymore but you would still have to pay the 50m/yr like he was still under contract.
At this point you would be paying a rookie QB basically nothing so that dead money wouldn't really be a horrible detriment.

It would give you 4 more years of Dak, He would be 36 years old by the end of the contract and hopefully you could trade him and get a 1st or 2nd round pick out of it. Worst case scenario you have to cut him and you would most likely get a 3rd round comp pick anyway.

This extends your window of trying to win by 4 years, before having to blow it all up and start the rebuild.

This is all convoluted and ambiguous. It wasn't a total waste of my time. I learned how annoying it must be to run the teams finances.
I don't envy the person in charge of player salary and cap management for the team.

 

[bleachedwheat]

Now that I think about it. The original 29m dollars of unguaranteed base salary wouldn't fall off of the books unless he wasn't on the team anymore.
Easy fix though... take that 29m and add it to the 50m of unguaranteed salary in 2028. That would make the final cap hit in 2028, 109m dollars. Making it even more likely he would have to be traded or cut that year. It wouldn't change the dead cap hit at all because its all unguaranteed salary.

 

[shabazz]

Thanks for all this. Again if they want to they can and will sign all 3. Even though some of our fans refuse to believe logic

Certainly a team can sign a QB, WR and an Edge/LB to the highest contracts at their positions but what's the rest of the roster gonna look like?

These three positions are litearly the three highest salaries.

 

[Loso86]

Certainly a team can sign a QB, WR and an Edge/LB to the highest contracts at their positions but what's the rest of the roster gonna look like?

These three positions are litearly the three highest salaries.

Ok again if it's 1 think I trust the team to do it's do team cap friendly contracts

 

[malbis030347]

Let Dak and CD play out this year with the cap hits they have right now 55 and 18 million respectively.

Give Dak an extension with a option signing bonus that gives him his bonus on the first day of the new league year 2025.

Dak contract
4yr 240mil- 60mil/yr on average... 200mil in Guaranteed money... Signing Bonus 75 million dollars(Highest ever beats Goff's 73 million.
He doesn't sign a no trade clause, potential out 2028. He already has 3 void years just use these again.
With the 75m signing bonus you can take 240m-75m=165m... Divide 165m by the 4yrs in his contract to get 41.25m per year base salary.

The signing bonus is like a loan and takes off 18.75m in base salary per year. It is stored in the Void years until his contract is up or he is traded. Then it hits the cap all at once. His dead cap would be 75m+54m that he already has in dead cap. 129m in dead cap total yr 2028. Dead cap can be split in half and paid over 2years. 64.5/yr.

Yearly it looks like this
2024 base salary 55mil
2025 base salary 41.25m
2026 base salary 41.25m
2027 base salary 42.50m
2028 base salary 40m
add all those base salaries together and you get 165m in base salary. Then add the signing bonus of 75m to it, and you get 240m.
add the first 3yrs of his extension together and the signing bonus and it comes to 200m dollars.
Dak's 200 million in guaranteed money would be paid by the end of 2027 and If they wanted to they could trade him.

CD contract
4yr 140m- 35m/yr on average... 115m in Guaranteed money(Jefferson got 110m)... Signing Bonus of 40m(Jefferson got 37m)
He doesn't sign a no trade clause, potential out 2028. Add void years to accommodate the 40 million in signing bonus.
140m-40m Bonus=100m... Divide 100m by the 4yrs in his contract to get 25m per year base salary.

This time it saves 10m per year and after the contract expires you would owe 40m in dead money and split it over two years 20m per year.

Yearly it looks like this
2024 base salary 18m
2025 base salary 25m
2026 base salary 25m
2027 base salary 25m
2028 base salary 25m
add all those base salaries together and you get 100m in base salary. Then add the signing bonus of 40m to it, and you get 140m.
add the first 3yrs of his extension together and the signing bonus and it comes to 115m.
CD's 115m in Guaranteed money would be paid by the end of 2027, and if they wanted to they could trade him.

Parsons
2024 makes 5.3m
2025 he makes 21.3m on his 5th year option
2026 two options
Place the exclusive franchise tag on him(protects from other teams trying to sign him). It would be 120% of 2025 salary coming to about 25 million dollars.
or
Place the Non-exclusive franchise tag on him. A team would offer him a contract if they wanted him. If he accepted, Dallas would then be able to keep him by matching the teams offer or let him go to the other team and get 2 first round picks in return.
2027 same scenario unless he was traded the year before. The only difference is he would cost around 30m if they used the Franchise Tag two years in a row.

If they did all this and traded Dak and CD in 2028 they would have 129m dead cap from Dak and 40m for CD. Pay that over two years a total of 84.5 per year.
It sounds like a lot but by then Parsons should be off the books to with no dead money.
If you add up what you would have been paying them on average Dak 42m + CD 25m + Parsons 25m It would be 92m per year.

So for two years it would be like you were paying the 3 players even though they aren't on the team. In a rebuild scenario who cares. You would be breaking in a new QB anyway and by the time you figure out if he can play and you want to add pieces around him, all the dead cap will have been paid in full. Then you would have the cap space to add in FA.

If they did this the 2025 cap space would be
Dead money from
FA Tank 4.4m 2025 and 2026
FA Cooks 3m 2025 and 2026
Retired Martin 12.25m 2025 and 2026
around 20m/yr in dead money 2025 and 2026

Steele's pay increases by 6m
Parsons pay increases by 16m

but you save by not paying the players their big salaries anymore
saved cap space
Tank 16m less than he made last year salary was 20.4m-4.4m in dead money.
Cooks 7m less than he made last year salary was 10m-3m in dead money.
Martin 3.25m less than he made last year salary was 15.5m-12.25m in dead money.
Dak and CD old contracts combined 18+55=73 vs 25+42=67 saves about 6m/yr.

Basically you save around 30m dollars by not resigning/extending these players.
The cap is also projected to raise another 18-20m dollars
Plus what ever you carry over from 2024.

Dead money and pay increases total is about 42 million

Savings 50-60 million plus whatever you save from other FA on the team that you decide not to resign like Osa, Kendricks, Zeke.

Depending on how they play it they could have 20-30 million dollars to spend in FA next season and have their 3 best players to boot.

So it is possible. These void years and stuff can be confusing.