Late last week Bleacher Report's Brad Gagnon went through the contracts of all 32 NFL teams and attempted to determine who holds the worst contract for each team. Every team in the NFL is carrying bad contracts. Even the Dallas Cowboys, who've become really good at managing their cap. It's the nature of player evaluation and contract negotiations in all sports. You pay players with a balance of historical production and potential progression.
Here are the rules they laid out in their analysis:
- Had to be a contract of more than $5 million per year.
- Looked more at the cost of the player beyond the 2019 season.
- Player progression and trajectory matters.
- Looked mainly at 2018 production and showed a little grace to players with who were injured.
It's certainly a difficult task to undertake, and there are some really solid choices on their list, like Star Lotuleilei's five-year $50 million deal that he's being paid by the Buffalo Bills. That's a lot of money for a nose tackle. On the flipside, they chose DeMarcus Lawrence as having the worst contract on the Dallas Cowboys. To be fair, they also chose Khalil Mack's contract as the worst for the Chicago Bears.
I guess they aren't a fan of paying elite pass rushers elite money.
Here's what they had to say about Lawrence's deal:
“This is a similar situation to Mack's in Chicago. Mack and Lawrence are the only two pass-rushers making $21-plus million per year, and Lawrence's new deal with the Dallas Cowboys ties him to the team through at least 2021. Even after that, it'd cost Dallas $10 million to cut him ahead of the 2022 season.”
Brad Gagnon – Bleacher Report
In their assessment of Lawrence, they're assuming that he's not going to continue to be a disruptive player for the Dallas Cowboys beyond 2019 or 2020. We talked about Lawrence last week and I listed him as one of the five most important Dallas Cowboys for them to have success in 2019. His ability to play the run and rush the passer at an elite level is invaluable. Sure, paying any player north of $20 million and more than 10% of your salary cap seems like a bad idea on the surface, but when you're talking about one of the five best defensive linemen in the NFL, $21 million per year and $60 million guaranteed is the cost of doing business.
There's a reason the Dallas Cowboys felt comfortable paying Lawrence elite edge money, it's because he's an elite edge. Were it not for injuries early in his career, national observers would be talking about Lawrence in the same light as Mack and Von Miller. Despite two highly productive seasons for the Dallas Cowboys, Lawrence is still highly underrated. If the talk from Cowboys fans is any indication, he's underrated in his own fanbase.
If you go to OverTheCap.com and look at the Dallas Cowboys contractual obligations for the next few years, you see a team that hasn't loaded themselves down with many, if any bad contracts. If there's one that's arguably bad, it's the Tyrone Crawford contract.
The Dallas Cowboys will pay him a little more than $10 million this season and a little more than $9 million in 2020. After that, his contract expires and he becomes a free agent.
Crawford has always been a solid player for the Dallas Cowboys, even if he hasn't lived up to the contract extension he received back in 2015. His ability to play both defensive end positions as well as 3-technique defensive tackle along with his leadership has made him an important piece to the Dallas Cowboys playoff teams over the last five seasons. It's become evident, that for the Dallas Cowboys front office and coaching staff, they'd much rather have Crawford playing at $10 million a season than not have him at all.
In the short term, particularly for 2019, the contract that stands out the most is Allen Hurns.
Hurns signed a two-year deal in the 2018 offseason and the thought was he'd be able to supplement some of the production that was lost when the team released Dez Bryant. Hurns, unfortunately, struggled to hit his stride last season before suffering an ankle fracture in the win over the Seattle Seahawks in the playoffs.
The sixth-year wide receiver is now set to have a salary cap hit of $6.25 million in 2019. The Dallas Cowboys could walk away from his salary and save $5 million on the cap with only $1.25 million in dead money.
For a receiver who has had a 1,000-yard season in the NFL, $6.25 million dollars isn't that much. Remember, Sammy Watkins signed for $16 million a season last offseason and only has one 1,000 yard receiving season to his name.
Again, the Dallas Cowboys dodged a bullet with that one.
The Dallas Cowboys coaching staff, reportedly really likes Allen Hurns. On the field, he can help the team on the outside and in the slot and provides tremendous depth at the wide receiver position. How he, and some of the wide receivers further down the depth chart, perform during training camp and preseason, will make or break Hurns' employment with Dallas Cowboys in 2019.
Even with the contracts of Tyrone Crawford and Allen Hurns on the books, the Dallas Cowboys have $20 million in cap space in 2019 and almost $75 million in cap space in 2020. Sure those numbers will change significantly whenever Dak Prescott, Amari Cooper, and possibly Ezekiel Elliott sign their new contracts, but the Dallas Cowboys are in great shape in terms of the cap. They aren't carrying much dead money and there are zero contracts on the roster that are weighing them down and keeping them from doing what they want to do in free agency and with their own players.
Good drafting and wise free agent pursuits have finally destroyed the narrative that the Dallas Cowboys were in “cap hell.” Sure, it can be frustrating during free agency to watch other teams make moves and improve their team, but it sure is nice that they're in the position to be able to hand out long-term extensions to the core of their team.
Namely the newest iteration of The Triplets.
