IRVING, Texas – A couple of weeks ago, Calvin Watkins gave you the top-10 salary-cap figures on the Dallas Cowboys. Last week, I gave you some salary-cap bargains.
Today we bring you the dead money that will be accounted for on the Cowboys’ 2014 salary cap.
They will have roughly $11.8 million in dead money, led by Jay Ratliff’s $6.928 million.
Two teams will have more dead money than the Cowboys (Carolina Panthers at $17.8 million, Buffalo Bills at $12.07 million). The Arizona Cardinals will have about $10 million in dead money.
The top-five “dead money” players remaining on the books for 2014 after Ratliff are: Nate Livings ($2.1 million), Marcus Spears ($1.4 million), Sean Lissemore ($1.2 million) and David Arkin ($113,400).
By the time the Cowboys have to get under the cap in March, there will be more dead money added after players are released. If the Cowboys cut DeMarcus Ware, they would have $8.5 million in dead money dedicated to Ware, but the move would save them nearly $7.4 million in cap space.
If they designate wide receiver Miles Austin as a June 1 cut, then the Cowboys would carry $2.749 million in dead money and Austin would count $5.1 million against the cap in 2015.