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By Bob Sturm
5h ago
There was a time as kids where you could learn an entire roster of players on your favorite team with ease. These guys seemed to stay for years and when you bought the poster of the 1978 Dallas Cowboys and would stare at it and have a familiarity that was hard to mistake. I have a good friend who still can recite the entire roster by heart of a team that played 45 years ago.
But, the NFL was different back then. Players had no ability to move in free agency and teams pretty much had you on their roster for as long as they wanted. It made for continuity and for the fans to really feel a bond with even the bottom of the roster. But, it doesn’t exist anymore.
Now, teams must move quicker and understand that the big picture is more immediate. This has become far more of a year-to-year proposition with the quest of winning a title should move to the front burner quicker. This is now the way things appear to be with teams “going for it” and understanding that worrying about seven years from now seems silly.
The Philadelphia Eagles almost won two Super Bowls within 60 months with completely different rosters. In February 2018 they beat the Patriots and in 2023, they returned with only five players left on the roster (excluding kicker and deep snapper) in February of 2023 and nearly won the whole thing. So, in the minds of the fans — especially in the future — those two teams will probably be considered linked as “one and the same”, but the reality is that it is more than 90 percent a cast of new characters.
This is why we must have a solid understanding about how a roster is built and how we think of the “four-year conveyor belt of talent” which is an important lesson for any modern-day NFL fan who really wants to dive below fantasy football levels and dig into what makes successful franchises successful in 2023.
Let’s review the concept:
What is the ‘four-year conveyor belt of talent?’
The normal rookie contract in the NFL is a four-year deal. This is true for all rookie contracts that are not first-round picks. Those first-rounders have a fifth-year option that can be activated, but it is basically the NFL’s equivalent of arbitration, which means it is not really a significant discount over where elite players at his position will generally earn.
Next year, for instance, the Cowboys will have CeeDee Lamb on his fifth-year option of $17.99 million in 2024, which is the Year-5 price for a wide receiver. But the first four years were at a total of $14 million — about $3.5 million per season. As you can see, this is a major decision for a team to “bridge” its player to a long-term extension, because they are officially walking across the bridge from cheap labor to expensive. Very expensive. If you need 53 to 60 players under $224.8 million (the 2023 NFL salary cap), then you had better have a very high number of cheap players if you are going to try to pay your best five players over half of it on their own. It simply has to cause issues at some point and the only solution is having a roster filled with guys on their rookie deals.
Let’s look at why the four-year conveyor belt is so vital.
At present, the Cowboys have eight players who average at least $10 million per year on their deals. That may not sound so bad, but as you can quickly see, that ends up at $130.9 million. More specifically, that’s about 58.2 percent of their entire payroll.
Cowboys' top 8 salaries for 2023
PLAYER | AAV |
---|---|
Dak Prescott | $40 million |
Brandin Cooks | $19.8 million |
Zack Martin | $14 million |
DeMarcus Lawrence | $13.3 million |
Tyron Smith | $12.2 million |
Michael Gallup | $11.5 million |
Tony Pollard | $10.1 million |
Stephon Gilmore | $10 million |
TOTAL | $130.9 million |
But, wait, there is more.
As, we mentioned above, the Cowboys have Lamb locked in at $18 million for 2024, which can certainly be used as his entry number of a long-term contract for the next four to six years. Maybe one that will average in the $24 million range, perhaps. OK, then we must also consider what we have been earmarking for Trevon Diggs. Could you get Diggs at around $18 million a year? Maybe? Then what about Micah Parsons? I have no idea what Parsons’ value will be, but it seems to start in the $28 million a year vicinity and perhaps gets above $30 million by the time Nick Bosa gets his deal done to set the standard for Parsons. Do you want to try Tony Pollard at $10 million per? And, of course, the QB will need a new deal soon enough to offer cap flexibility moving forward. Any chance that comes in at less than $45 million?
You stressed out yet? The Cowboys are now seeing things get very, very top heavy.
Let’s go back to the spreadsheet and imagine what those numbers might end up doing to this list of top salaries:
Cowboys' estimated top 7 salaries for 2025
PLAYER | AAV |
---|---|
Dak Prescott | $45 million |
Micah Parsons | $30 million |
CeeDee Lamb | $24 million |
Trevon Diggs | $18 million |
| $14 million |
Michael Gallup | $11.5 million |
Tony Pollard | $10.1 million |
TOTAL | $152.6 million |