IRVING, Texas - Too, too bad this ain't Fantasy Football.
Then the Cowboys could go off into free agency 11 days from now and take one of these and one of these and one of these, and not just any ol' guy, but the best available at all the positions.
Just go get them the best backup quarterback available.
The best cornerback . . . guard . . . safety . . . pass rusher . . . wide receiver . . . punter . . . linebacker or two (inside and out) . . . fullback . . . defensive end.
Darn salary cap, putting the damper on all these pipe dreams taking on a life of their own this time of year when fans of every team in the NFL love to play GM, coming up with so many bright ideas to fill glaring holes, suggesting their GM spend money hand over fist so they too can stage a tickertape parade two days after the Super Bowl.
Darn reality.
Because in the NFL, no matter what someone might tell you or how many perceived loopholes you might think there are, there is a salary cap – a hard salary cap susceptible to only so much massaging, placing a definite governor on spending. Baseball this isn't. No Yankees allowed.
That is why this mentality of signing this guy and cutting that guy doesn't wash in the NFL. You know, just cut Terence Newman because people tell you that will save the Cowboys his $6 million base salary in 2012. OK, but understand the Cowboys still must account for $6 million in unaccounted signing bonus that's been prorated over the life of the contract. By cutting Newman that would mean either $2 million of dead money this year and $4 million more next or all $6 million this year if done so before June 1.
Quite a savings, huh?
Also hear all this bar talk – or would that be talk radio – about trading Tony Romo so the Cowboys could move up in the draft to select Robert Griffin III? Seriously? OK, so that move would immediately toss like $12.5 million of dead money into the Cowboys salary cap. Does that make fiscal sense when you really have just $12.6 million of cap space available after lopping off the roughly $5.5 million budgeted for the April draft?
And they have that modest sum by the grace of last year's lockout wiping out the off-season and creating the shotgun start to 2011 under the newly authored collective bargaining agreement. Otherwise, the Cowboys might have been starting this official off-season in the red, er, having to release players just to do business.
Remember all that dead money we talked about last year, accumulated from the releases of such high-priced veterans as Leonard Davis, Roy Williams, Marion Barber, Andre Gurode, Igor Olshanksy and Marc Colombo, along with some leftover dead dollars from cuts made in 2010? Why, the Cowboys were staring at $28 million in dead money escalating into their 2012 salary cap. And when the cap figures to be in the vicinity of $125 million this year, the Cowboys would be missing a cool fourth.
But the Cowboys took advantage of a mechanism installed to counter last year's late start to free agency and the salary, where unspent cap money in 2011 could be transferred into 2012. They were able to move their $17 million of surplus in 2011 into 2012, allowing them to eat up more than half of the dead money they were facing. They realized by doing so they could clean up all this dead money mess in two seasons, along with relieving themselves of some expensive dead weight.
"My hat's really off, we've done an outstanding job, and I give Stephen a lot of credit for taking a year that we thought this was going to be Armageddon for us this year, and we were able to do some things last year with the cap that really puts us and give us a viability," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of his son, Stephen Jones, the team's COO and director of player personnel. "Stephen and a lot of the crew he works with regarding the cap and contracts and all that, has given us chance to have some room to improve this team this year, and we will use it."
Not only does Jerry speak of Stephen Jones, the keeper of the cap, but also his assistants, Todd Williams, the director of football administration, and Adam Prasifka, listed as "player personnel," but really more of a mathematical savant. Seemingly the lives of Williams and Prasifka are dictated by the salary cap. They are the X and O guys of the cap and contract structures.
So at this point, with Monday's deadline looming to franchise players and tender restricted and exclusive rights tenders, the Cowboys currently have like $12.6 million in available cap space. Those exclusive tenders will eat up almost another $2 million, assuming they all are tendered. And then add $1.6 million to that for the projected restricted tender to fullback Tony Fiammetta.
And, if the Cowboys cannot or choose not to sign outside linebacker Anthony Spencer to a long-term extension and decide to franchise him, well that's another $8.8 million against the cap and a good reason why they indeed might franchise him to buy some extra time to continue negotiating a long-term deal while his rights are protected.
Now I'm told the Cowboys, if they so choose, can restructure a couple of contracts to create more cap room, like enough to take that $12.6 figure to roughly $20 million. That certainly would help – might be a necessity.
But even at that, they could not act as if a bunch of kids in a candy store, wanting not only one of each but the high end of each. Plus, you also must factor in necessities, like really needing to sign, even if it is re-signing one of your own, a backup quarterback, a safety, a guard, a receiver with some experience (Laurent Robinson?) and possibly either on-the-mend punter Mat McBriar or another one if they don't think last year's rookie fill-in Chris Jones is a suitable replacement.
That's a lot, and compared to some teams with $60 million of cap space available or like the Redskins with $47 million available, the Cowboys must do all this with relatively little.
If only that salary cap was just a figment of someone's imagination.
Darn it.
Then the Cowboys could go off into free agency 11 days from now and take one of these and one of these and one of these, and not just any ol' guy, but the best available at all the positions.
Just go get them the best backup quarterback available.
The best cornerback . . . guard . . . safety . . . pass rusher . . . wide receiver . . . punter . . . linebacker or two (inside and out) . . . fullback . . . defensive end.
Darn salary cap, putting the damper on all these pipe dreams taking on a life of their own this time of year when fans of every team in the NFL love to play GM, coming up with so many bright ideas to fill glaring holes, suggesting their GM spend money hand over fist so they too can stage a tickertape parade two days after the Super Bowl.
Darn reality.
Because in the NFL, no matter what someone might tell you or how many perceived loopholes you might think there are, there is a salary cap – a hard salary cap susceptible to only so much massaging, placing a definite governor on spending. Baseball this isn't. No Yankees allowed.
That is why this mentality of signing this guy and cutting that guy doesn't wash in the NFL. You know, just cut Terence Newman because people tell you that will save the Cowboys his $6 million base salary in 2012. OK, but understand the Cowboys still must account for $6 million in unaccounted signing bonus that's been prorated over the life of the contract. By cutting Newman that would mean either $2 million of dead money this year and $4 million more next or all $6 million this year if done so before June 1.
Quite a savings, huh?
Also hear all this bar talk – or would that be talk radio – about trading Tony Romo so the Cowboys could move up in the draft to select Robert Griffin III? Seriously? OK, so that move would immediately toss like $12.5 million of dead money into the Cowboys salary cap. Does that make fiscal sense when you really have just $12.6 million of cap space available after lopping off the roughly $5.5 million budgeted for the April draft?
And they have that modest sum by the grace of last year's lockout wiping out the off-season and creating the shotgun start to 2011 under the newly authored collective bargaining agreement. Otherwise, the Cowboys might have been starting this official off-season in the red, er, having to release players just to do business.
Remember all that dead money we talked about last year, accumulated from the releases of such high-priced veterans as Leonard Davis, Roy Williams, Marion Barber, Andre Gurode, Igor Olshanksy and Marc Colombo, along with some leftover dead dollars from cuts made in 2010? Why, the Cowboys were staring at $28 million in dead money escalating into their 2012 salary cap. And when the cap figures to be in the vicinity of $125 million this year, the Cowboys would be missing a cool fourth.
But the Cowboys took advantage of a mechanism installed to counter last year's late start to free agency and the salary, where unspent cap money in 2011 could be transferred into 2012. They were able to move their $17 million of surplus in 2011 into 2012, allowing them to eat up more than half of the dead money they were facing. They realized by doing so they could clean up all this dead money mess in two seasons, along with relieving themselves of some expensive dead weight.
"My hat's really off, we've done an outstanding job, and I give Stephen a lot of credit for taking a year that we thought this was going to be Armageddon for us this year, and we were able to do some things last year with the cap that really puts us and give us a viability," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of his son, Stephen Jones, the team's COO and director of player personnel. "Stephen and a lot of the crew he works with regarding the cap and contracts and all that, has given us chance to have some room to improve this team this year, and we will use it."
Not only does Jerry speak of Stephen Jones, the keeper of the cap, but also his assistants, Todd Williams, the director of football administration, and Adam Prasifka, listed as "player personnel," but really more of a mathematical savant. Seemingly the lives of Williams and Prasifka are dictated by the salary cap. They are the X and O guys of the cap and contract structures.
So at this point, with Monday's deadline looming to franchise players and tender restricted and exclusive rights tenders, the Cowboys currently have like $12.6 million in available cap space. Those exclusive tenders will eat up almost another $2 million, assuming they all are tendered. And then add $1.6 million to that for the projected restricted tender to fullback Tony Fiammetta.
And, if the Cowboys cannot or choose not to sign outside linebacker Anthony Spencer to a long-term extension and decide to franchise him, well that's another $8.8 million against the cap and a good reason why they indeed might franchise him to buy some extra time to continue negotiating a long-term deal while his rights are protected.
Now I'm told the Cowboys, if they so choose, can restructure a couple of contracts to create more cap room, like enough to take that $12.6 figure to roughly $20 million. That certainly would help – might be a necessity.
But even at that, they could not act as if a bunch of kids in a candy store, wanting not only one of each but the high end of each. Plus, you also must factor in necessities, like really needing to sign, even if it is re-signing one of your own, a backup quarterback, a safety, a guard, a receiver with some experience (Laurent Robinson?) and possibly either on-the-mend punter Mat McBriar or another one if they don't think last year's rookie fill-in Chris Jones is a suitable replacement.
That's a lot, and compared to some teams with $60 million of cap space available or like the Redskins with $47 million available, the Cowboys must do all this with relatively little.
If only that salary cap was just a figment of someone's imagination.
Darn it.
