Breakdown of Cowboys' restructuring Prescott salary for cap compliance

The Dallas Cowboys made the expected move on Wednesday, pulling the restructure trigger on quarterback Dak Prescott's contract to create additional cap space for the upcoming 2026 league year. The move was expected because the ability to do so is coded into the language of Prescott's deal, and it's been the chosen mechanism the club has employed for almost a decade.

Prescott's contract, like most other big-money pacts the team doles out, is structured in a way where they have the ability to convert the player's base salary into a bonus that can be spread evenly across a number of remaining years on the contract.

Here's how it works in Prescott's situation.

• Prescott had a 2026 base salary of $40 million
• The team moved $38.2 million from salary to restructure bonus
• The bonus is still paid in 2026 as weekly checks during the season
• For cap purposes, bonus amount is spread across the 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030 seasons
• Each of those years now has an additional $7.64 million in cap hit added to whatever was there before
• This creates $30.56 million space for 2026 ($7.64M x the 4 future seasons cap hit was parked)
• Prescott's 2027 cap hit is now $76 million, but he'll be paid $45 million
• Prescott's 2028 cap hit is now $86 million, but he'll be paid $55 million
• The Cowboys have the ability to restructure both of those years as well

When the two sides agreed to a four-year extension in 2024 to make Prescott the NFL's highest-paid player, the deal was for $240 million of new money, in addition to his already agreed upon 2024 salary. Prescott was on the books for a $29 million base salary that season, making it in total a five-year, $269 million agreeement.

Prescott received an $80 million signing bonus, which the team didn't have to account for immediately thanks to the CBA. Bonus money, whether signing bonus, option bonus or restructure bonuses, can be spread out across up to five years of salary cap space, provided there are that many years remaining on a deal.

And the CBA goes even further to help teams manage their cap, but allowing void years in contracts. These are seasons beyond the agreed upon structure of a deal that are simply place holders to stash cap hits after the contract is over. The contract years "void" after some guaranteed-to-happen trigger (if player is under contract in 2025, then his 2028 contract year is voided) occurs.

Prescott's four-year extension has four void years to stash cap hit on. They'll all come due at the same time if the two parties part ways when the contract is over, but if there's another extension, those cap hits are parked on those future season's cap hits.

The restructure added $15.28 million of dead money that sits in 2029 and beyond, with Prescott's deal ending in 2028. Prescott already had $9.15 million of dead money in 2029 after a similar exercise last season; he now has $24.43 million of dead money that will hit the cap in 2029.

Even though teams can park cap hits many years beyond a deal, once the deal is done, all of those hits accelerate into the first cap after the expiration, which for Prescott is 2029.

This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: How Cowboys restructure of Prescott's contract for $30M in space works