Doesn't this mean we'll have dead money against the cap next year basically? Not sure that's a good idea.
Why would we have dead money because of a 1 year deal?
According to Spotrac we have around $114 milion committed to next year with no restructures or releases. If we get rid of someone like Carr or Lee that will obviously give us more flexibility to structure deals for guys like Dez and Hardy in terms of cap hits in 2017, 2018, etc., even if it results in dead money next year. And several of these guys that we signed this year (Gachkar, Brinkley, McFadden) are listed in that 114 number with cap hits around 2-3 million, but we could get rid of them with minimal damage because the guaranteed money they got was so low. Basically, we can open up several million more very easily without restructuring or losing anybody important.
Anyway, assuming the cap is around $145 million, that should give us plenty of room to sign Dez, Hardy and Crawford if we wanted to. Even if we gave both Dez and Hardy deals that average 15 a year with 35 guaranteed, we could easily structure it to where the first years of those deals would only have cap hits around 5-10 million. We'd be pushing those cap hits into the future, yes, but by that time Romo will be damn near 40 and surely off the books.
Long story short, if Hardy has a huge year and we make a run, I'm not really worried about our ability to keep him, Dez or Crawford.
