Will Cowboys pay RG Zack Martin in excess of $13 million per year?

vince

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The pessimist in me thinks Smiths back is going to flush that in a year or two.
That's not being a pessimist. That's being a realist. Back problems are a huge deal and he's been sidelined way too much already.
 

deadrise

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Surely there is a scenario where player of Martin's caliber could get say top 6 money or top 10 money instead of top 3 money and yet still feel satisfied with his deal.

Just sayin'. There's no reason to immediately give him the moon. You don't want to play such hardball that there are bad feelings but value deals are out there at times.

"Immediately"? The guy's been here four years and has All-Pro and Pro-Bowl credentials to show for it. He's one of the best if not THE best in the game at his position. Why would he take top six or top ten money?

All it would take is one freak play and his career is over. Top six or top ten money? Uh-uh, baby. Show me the Benjamins right now. Lots of 'em.
 

Cotton

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Cowboysrock55

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I'm guessing it'll be 6 years, $80-85 million and about $35 guaranteed.
I am really glad it's done. Next up is Lawrence. At least we can potentially franchise him again if needed. But I'd rather get something long term done if possible. The other option is to wait and make sure he can reproduce last seasons success. Of course the price tag will only go up if he does that.
 

Cotton

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They got it done, but I'm still not seeing any details on the contract. Anyone else seen them?
 

jsmith6919

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Cowboysrock55

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Yep, so highest paid was 13 mil a year. So Dallas went to 14 mil a year. And I'm sure within the next year some guard will get even more.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Todd Archer
ESPN Staff Writer
The total deal for All-Pro right guard Zack Martin is seven years for $93.41 million and includes a $20 million signing bonus, according to a source. As Adam Schefter reported, the guaranteed money is $40 million. The Cowboys created around $3 million in cap room in 2018 with the new contract.
 

1bigfan13

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With all this television money being dished out for NFL broadcasts, you'd think there would be a massive salary cap increase across the league. Kinda shocked that we're still only seeing approximately $10M increases from year to year when the networks and online streaming services are eagerly forking over billions for the rights to air NFL games.

On another cap related note.....I think we may have discussed this before on this board, but I also think the NFL needs to implement some type of "Bird Rights" provision into the next CBA. NBA fans are familiar with this. Essentially it means that teams can sign players that they've drafted to max contracts while getting a cap break in the process. A significantly smaller portion of those player salaries count towards the cap compared to the cap hit that you'd see had you signed a free agent from another team to a max contract.

Seems silly to me to have a system in place that punishes teams who do a great job building through the draft by putting them in a position where they have to standby while a good portion of their best young talent is ripped from them after their rookie deals are up. I'd love to see them tweak the system so that teams are put in better positions to retain their top home grown talent. As it stands now, if you have killer draft classes in back to back years, you'd be hard pressed to resign more than 4 or 5 of those players to contracts that would be equal to what they'd get on the open market....especially if one of the players plays at a high-value position like QB or LT.
 

Cotton

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Todd Archer
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The total deal for All-Pro right guard Zack Martin is seven years for $93.41 million and includes a $20 million signing bonus, according to a source. As Adam Schefter reported, the guaranteed money is $40 million. The Cowboys created around $3 million in cap room in 2018 with the new contract.
So, is it 6 years or 7 years?
 

Simpleton

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So, is it 6 years or 7 years?
Probably a 6 year extension tacked on to this season, so a total of 7.

He would be under contract until 2024-25, at which point he'd be 34 in his last season. This more or less makes him a Cowboy for the rest of his career.
 

Cotton

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Probably a 6 year extension tacked on to this season, so a total of 7.

He would be under contract until 2024-25, at which point he'd be 34 in his last season. This more or less makes him a Cowboy for the rest of his career.
Gotcha.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Probably a 6 year extension tacked on to this season, so a total of 7.

He would be under contract until 2024-25, at which point he'd be 34 in his last season. This more or less makes him a Cowboy for the rest of his career.
That makes a lot of sense.
 

p1_

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I believe Martin is now the second highest paid lineman in the league.
 

ravidubey

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Probably a 6 year extension tacked on to this season, so a total of 7.

He would be under contract until 2024-25, at which point he'd be 34 in his last season. This more or less makes him a Cowboy for the rest of his career.
Who better to trust than a four-time All-Pro who’s never missed a game.

Too bad we are crappy at coaching up role players to compensate for all the cap money sunk into a handful of players on offense.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Zack Martin's extension through 2024 may just be a 4-year deal

By: K.D. Drummond | June 14, 2018 1:30 pm ET

There’s plenty to unpack after it has been announced the Dallas Cowboys have agreed to a six-year extension for right guard Zack Martin. If the initial reports are correct, Martin’s six-year add-on will pay him an average of $14 million per season from 2019 through 2024. The deal makes Martin the highest-paid interior offensive lineman and the second highest-paid OL in the entire league.

The devil is in the details, however, and although it is outrageous money to comprehend — and despite Martin being completely worth it — there is a bit more to the story.

The deal is likely to be just a four-year deal with three team options attached to the back end. This isn’t to say the team only plans on employing him for four years, just that Dallas is protected a bit from catastrophic possibilities. Here’s why.

Although we have yet to receive the full year-by-year details of the agreement, we have enough backstory to analyze the expected breakdown. As Todd Archer reported, Martin has $40 million guaranteed of the deal and half of that, $20 million, is in signing bonus.


Unlike NBA and MLB contracts, NFL deals aren’t fully guaranteed. Teams are allowed to cancel out the final years of a player’s deal as long as there is no guaranteed money associated with it. Signing bonuses are paid up front, and although they are prorated over up to five years and the cap hit can force teams to keep a player, the team has the option of releasing a guy and making no further deposits into his checking account.


Martin’s $40 million guaranteed will almost certainly be paid out to him over the first three years of the deal; 2018, 2019 and 2020. On top of the $20 million signing bonus, the first-year salary is also obviously guaranteed.

We covered yesterday how the amount of the signing bonus and the $3 million of cap savings reported by ESPN’s Archer means the Cowboys reduced Martin’s base salary from $9.341 million to around $2.341 million.

So that’s $22.341 million of $40 million, leaving $17.659 million guaranteed over 2019 and 2020. That easily sounds like guaranteeing the full base salary from his second year of the deal (2019) and part of the 2020 base salary as well.

That’s only three years of a seven-year agreement the team is 100 percent committed to paying Martin.

The fourth year gets guaranteed thanks to the signing bonus allocation. 2021 and 2022 will each have $4 million cap hits based on the equal five-part proration of the $20 million signing bonus. If the Cowboys release Martin prior to the fourth season of the deal (2021), the 2022 allocation would accelerate onto the 2021 cap. That would be an $8 million charge for him to no longer play on the team.

There have to be very dire circumstances (cough, Dez Bryant, cough) of regression and a shift in philosophy for the team to consider eating that amount of money. It’s possible they would do that, but highly improbable.

That’s why Martin’s deal is essentially for just four seasons. If after that point the team still feels he’s integral, they’ll be able to keep him on the team for the more expensive seasons. None of those would be guaranteed for Martin.

They would essentially be team options.


To be more frank, the deal is for just three years, the team has an $8 million penatly to escape at that point, and then four consecutive team options.

There are things that can change this. If the Cowboys have a big number for the second-year base salary and choose to restructure (as they have with several other big deals in the past), that extends the guaranteed cap hit through the sixth year of the deal. That provides more security to Martin, as the total allocation “on the books” for 2021 and 2022 rises from $8 million to likely well over $12 million to $14 million.

At that point it essentially makes 2021 a guaranteed season. Dallas has done things like this in order to keep the first two years of a player’s cap hit low, while also giving them security towards the back-middle of the deal.

When including the 2018 salary, Martin’s total deal is $93.41 million, again per ESPN. That is an actual average annual value of $13.34 million per season. That is just a hair more than the average annual value Andrew Norwell received in free agency in March, $13.30 million.

The Cowboys actually got a bit of a hometown discount as Martin is the much more accomplished player.

________________

For those concerned that we needed cap room to sign him it looks like we gained an extra 3 mil in cap room. So now we should be up to like 14 mil in cap space as of right now.
 

DLK150

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I think it's a good deal and am glad they got it out of the way well before training camp, at least it's one less distraction.
 
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