Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
How do you feel the Cowboys handle dead money?
Roster building consists of many different elements. How a team uses its financial resources looms large in what type of team they’re able to field on Sundays. For the
Dallas Cowboys, this has been a big point of contention, as many have questioned how they use their money. Are they spending enough money? Are they spending it on the right players?
When teams make poor decisions, they can find themselves paying for it with dead money hits, which can hurt future cap budgets and hinder a team’s ability to improve their roster. Yesterday, we
broke down some of the reasons teams accrue dead money hits, noting that not all dead money is created equal. We also mentioned that these dead money totals are considerably different between the Cowboys and Eagles, identifying several players from each team that contribute toward those figures. Today, we’ll branch out and look at where the other NFL teams fall and examine what type of impact it has had on them.
We know the front offices of the Cowboys and Eagles operate quite differently. Howie Roseman is constantly dealing with heavy dead-money hits. He’s shown a strong willingness to hit the reset on any position group necessary, change up personnel, and deal with the financial consequences later. The Eagles have not been fazed by monstrous dead-money hits.
In most cases, dead money charges are obstacles. These outstanding debts can stem from investing in bad players, restructuring contracts, and deferring cap hits with money allocated into void years. Sometimes the dead money is just pushing out the cost; other times it’s wasteful. Teams don’t want large dead-money hits because it can limit their spending power in any given year, that is, unless you’re the Eagles.
It should surprise no one that the Eagles have the largest dead money total over the last five years at a whopping $333 million. The Cowboys, on the other hand, are in the lower quadrant of NFL teams during this span, coming in just under $140 million. We can already feel your blood boiling as this information might suggest expensive dead-money charges show a willingness to take chances, while a more cautious approach, minimizing dead money, will get you nowhere. Is that true? Let’s examine.
Here are the dead money hits for all 32 teams over the last five years (
figures courtesy of spotrac.com).
- Red = the 10 highest dead-money hits for that year
- Green = the 10 lowest dead-money hits for that year
- Yellow = the 12 teams in between for that year
The Eagles are marching to the beat of their own drum with nearly $60 million more dead money than the next-highest team. They are regularly among the teams with the highest dead money hit each year. They are also the defending
Super Bowl Champions. Not only are the huge dead money hits not holding them back, but they’re somehow flourishing in that environment. Should more teams be taking that approach? Is there any correlation between dead money and wins?
We’re glad you asked because that’s the main purpose of this two-part article. Let’s look at that table again, only this time let’s add a column to include each team’s win total (including playoffs) since 2021. With this information, the data looks like this (click on the blue column headers to sort):
Dead money by team since 2021 (in $ million) |
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[td]Wins since 2021
[/td]
(Shout out to OCC for creating this table sortable)
If we focus on the eight teams in the top quadrant and the eight teams in the bottom quadrant, something interesting is revealed.
Suddenly, the perception changes. The Eagles are a winning team, but they are an anomaly rather than a blueprint for success. Some really bad teams are in that top quadrant, including the worst team over the last five years, the
Carolina Panthers.
The Cowboys are in the lower quadrant. Oddly enough, so are the
Kansas City Chiefs, who are the most successful team over the last five years. They have the second-lowest dead money hit during this span. The lower quadrant not only includes the Cowboys but also includes the top four AFC teams over the last half-decade. What’s even crazier is this stat...
Dead money totals over the last five years:
Large dead money charges hinder a team’s spending power. There are ways around it, as the Eagles have shown, but the data indicates that teams with high dead money hits aren’t the same ones that are winning football games on Sunday. It’s quite the opposite, as the teams with the lowest dead money charges are doing most of the winning. And yes, that includes the Cowboys.
We know the Cowboys have a playoff problem. And maybe that problem is due to inadequate talent. We all have our own theories. But what we can’t claim is that choosing to manage your dead money hits responsibly is hurting them, because many other successful teams are doing the same thing.
We’ve mentioned many times that the Eagles, despite all their recent success, are playing with fire. If some of their risky contracts turn into pumpkins, they’re going to be more exposed because of the high-cost financial commitment they have made to them. Pushing money into the future in itself won’t hurt them. And as long as the Eagles are getting good returns for their investments, it will be “all hail to Howie!”
However, the moment we start seeing more missteps like the recent Bryce Huff ordeal, that’s when things will start to weigh them down. And considering the Eagles have a large number of contracts with built-in void years, it opens the door for more players to fall into that dreaded “cutting their losses” category, and as we learned yesterday, that is where the dead money hits hurt you.
The Cowboys will continue to go about their business, and it won’t be without mistakes. As we mentioned yesterday, dead money from Jaylon Smith, Michael Gallup, and Ezekiel Elliott stings, and you never want those things. But they’re also small enough and spread out so as not to jeopardize their ability to compete in future seasons. Reducing those risks and creating more overall spending power appears to provide a much more effective formula for winning.