Fish's Cowboys 2015 Salary Cap Roster Primer
By Mike Fisher | @fishsports
IRVING (CBSDFW.COM) -- The "Cowboys cap hell" memes have steered you wrong. The Dallas Cowboys' salary-cap circumstances now, more than ever, include an almost endless assortment of choices, tools, levers, triggers. Or, if you prefer to insist that Jerry Jones' NFC East champs are in mythical "cap hell'' ... shovels, to dig their way out.
Let's bullet-point our way through this starting with what sounds like an absurd thesis: The Cowboys can afford anybody they want. The Cowboys can do anything they want.
Including -- build the 2015 roster by first carving out an incredible total of $49 million of room!
Here it goes:
* Dallas has about $4.5 million left of space to roll over into 2015.
* The projected salary cap for next season currently stands between $140 and $145 million. For this exercise, I'm projecting the cap for 2015 to be $142.5 million.
* The Cowboys have $138.3 million committed to salaries for 44 players for 2015. So go with $8 million of room for now.
Now, let's start carving:
* Tony Romo is slated as a $27.8 mil cap hit. Want to reduce that?
There's a restructure that moves $16 million from base salary to signing bonus (his base would still have to be league-minimum, roughly $1 million pro-rated over five years, and would give the Cowboys an additional $12.8 million of cap space.)
* This is a good point to note: I'm not necessarily recommending Dallas do this, or any of the other tools I'm about to detail. I'm not yet predicting it, either (though I bet the Cowboys will restructure Romo in some form.)
* Jason Witten's total cap hit of $8.5 million still carries one final year of big signing bonus hit. It would probably behoove the team to keep Witten one last year before walking away prior to 2016. But for the sake of the argument: If the Cowboys were to move on from Witten prior to '15, the club would reap savings of just under $3.3 million with a dead money impact of $5.24 mil on the '15 cap.
* Brandon Carr, as a June 1st cut, would have its benefits. Dallas would get $8 million in 2015 cap space to work with. The downside is that $7.4 million would now be 2016 dead money, but the pain is greatly lessened to tear up Carr's deal in this manner and start anew.
* Doug Free has $12 million earmarked currently, but that's a mirage. He's actually a free agent. Signing Free to a two- or three-year deal could still see Dallas saving about $3 million off this cap hit.
* Henry Melton, in the likely event Dallas chose to move on completely from him, would only cause the team to eat $750,000 in dead money, meaning the move would save them $8.5 million off their projected cap hit.
* Dallas will only need about $2.5 million of their space to sign their rookie class in the upcoming draft.
* Tyron Smith's huge contract offers the choice to turn any future year of his 10-year extension from base salary to signing bonus. This is, in effect, a $9-million safety valve whenever Dallas chooses to use it.
* Dez Bryant needs a new deal. As I reported when the Tyron deal went down, it helps Dez, not hurts Dez. Flip that Tyron switch and Dallas would seemingly have more than enough to sign WR Dez Bryant to his long-term $100-million deal.
A $20-mil signing bonus and a $1-mil base salary would put his 2015 cap hit at $6 million.
A franchise tag might be coming. But an ensuing deal for Dez needn't be that difficult.
* The Cowboys could make qualifying offers to their RFAs of Leary, Harris and Beasley and spend another $6 million there. This solidifies their starting offensive line, wide receivers and their special teams.
* Want a little more room? Reap some savings by moving on from players such as Terrell McClain and Mackenzy Bernadeau, individually worth more than $1 million of base salary each.
* The Cowboys need to buy some linebackers. Rolando McClain signed for a $3-million cap hit in 2015? Keep Bruce Carter or Justin Durant for less than that?
* Without using all these triggers and tools, I've got Dallas still having over $12 million in "usable" space remaining. Go nuts and use all the tools? You could have, in theory, $49 MILLION of ROOM!
* So Dallas CAN sign DeMarco Murray. (Not that I believe that's happening.) CAN pursue Suh. (Again, a wild hypothetical but worth the discussion now that you know the numbers.) CAN pay Dez whatever it takes. (While trying to convince him that the more he's paid, the fewer puzzle pieces the Cowboys can support him with.)
So there is no "cap hell." There is simply the budget and the room and the ways to make it all fit.
Now we're ready to discuss it all ... and the Cowboys themselves are ready to act.
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