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Cowboys’ Offseason Bookkeeping Can Begin With A Restructure Of Dak Prescott’s Contract

The NFL won’t officially start its new league year until March 16. 토토사이트

That is when several hundred players across the league, including 21 on the Cowboys, are scheduled to become unrestricted free agents. Club rosters expand from 53 to 90 players. A larger salary cap goes into effect.

Something about all that blue and yellow Super Bowl confetti from Sunday, though, flipped a figurative page on the calendar.

It is about 2022 now.

It is time to look ahead.

While the Cowboys aim for a different result than last season, their next several weeks should feel familiar. Largely the same coaches and scouts who orchestrated an impressive 2021 offseason are back. Once again, the game plan is poised to begin with Dak Prescott’s contract and measured external spending in free agency.

Last winter, drama surrounded the Cowboys quarterback and his long-term future before he signed a four-year, $160 million extension. No such intrigue or suspense exists today. But like in 2021, Prescott’s deal can set the table financially for the spending year ahead.

Presently, he is set to earn a $20 million salary in 2022.

An automatic conversion can be performed on that figure, allowing the Cowboys to convert the vast majority of his salary into signing bonus without negotiation. This would be done for the sole purpose of creating immediate salary-cap relief; the converted sum amortizes across the cap for five years.

For example, the Cowboys can email Prescott’s agent Todd France and notify him they are reducing Prescott’s salary from $20 million to $2 million. The $18 million difference still would be owed to Prescott as a signing bonus.

Instead of the $18 million all counting against the 2022 salary cap, only one-fifth of it — $3.6 million — would. In this scenario, the Cowboys create $14.4 million in cap space for 2022 in exchange for Prescott counting an extra $3.6 million against the cap in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.

The Cowboys have eyed this maneuver for a while, attaching two voidable years at the end of his contract last March specifically with it in mind. That email likely won’t come for at least another couple of weeks.

Generally speaking, pushing money into the future can be a perilous task. There are examples across the NFL of clubs hampering their future financial flexibility when tying themselves to the wrong players. Less concern exists, however, with a franchise quarterback at a time when teams anticipate the cap to experience a substantial windfall in years to come from the league’s broadcasting contracts.

As for free agency, the Cowboys prioritize getting their own house in order.

Defensive end Randy Gregory is among their aforementioned 21 unrestricted free agents. An effort to re-sign him is expected. Many key offensive weapons — tight end Dalton Schultz, wide receiver Michael Gallup, wide receiver Cedrick Wilson — are among the other 20. The team needs to finalize wide receiver Amari Cooper’s future; his $20 million contract makes him a candidate for trade or release.