How the Cowboys Restructured Contract Helps the Team Move Forward in 2026?
The Cowboys decided to restructure the contracts of two of their players. The contracts for 32-year-old quarterback Dak Prescott and 24-year-old offensive lineman Tyler Smith were adjusted on Wednesday morning. These contractual changes will bring more money for the upcoming NFL Draft. Aside from those changes to the team members, Jerry Jones is not yet done with freeing up salary cap funds as he attempts to negotiate additional contract changes to allocate funds. Jones hopes they can acquire strong players who can fix the holes in the team’s defensive line.
Despite the extra wiggle room that this has freed up, Jones stated he will likely need to “bust the budget” to achieve his goal of stopping people and getting three downs. While they have multiple people raring to go, such as the 28-year-old defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, who was signed on February 21st, another good choice would be drafting safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren. Jones has signaled that he is nowhere near done with finding even more players to shake up the team going forward, and with McNeil-Warren’s record with the Toledo Rockets, he’s a perfect fit for them. He plans to go above and beyond to fix the team’s lacking defense, something that will take more than one or two players to remedy. “I want to do everything we possibly can to stop somebody and to basically win some third downs more than we did last year. So I think that would be the area that you would see me bust the budget."
With the NFL Draft a month away and free agency approaching, the Cowboys have multiple hard deadlines approaching. There are some tough decisions they’ll have to make on whether they should go for broke or be a bit more conservative with their picks. Based on his statements, it seems they’ll be signing strong players for current improvement while sacrificing the potential for flexibility in their future schemes. For example, Jones said that his team needs to be ready to go, so they would sacrifice players who aren’t quite right for now, so that those who are can. Anyone who is a redshirt could be left behind in favor of those who “Got to go this year,” as Jones said.
