This is the sixth article in a six-part series looking at the teams who are currently projected to be $20 million or more in the red in cap space for 2024, and the path forward for them to get under the cap.  The full list of teams includes:  While we don’t have a formal projection for the 2024 cap yet, it’s safe to say that number will end up north of $240 million, growing by more than $16 million for the second consecutive year. Before we dive into the Cowboys, here are some quick salary cap-related notes and definitions, as this can be a complicated subject.  Salary cap: The cap is the maximum any NFL team can spend on player salaries. Essentially, every team gets the same pie and can choose how to split it up, with various accounting mechanisms to manipulate how much cap space is available in any given year.  Dead Money: A term for money that has already been paid to a player and will count against a team’s salary cap no matter what. Most of the time this comes from signing bonuses, either from when a deal is initially signed or from restructures. When a player is cut, all the dead money remaining on their contract accelerates to the current year.  Restructure: An accounting trick teams can use to manage the cap in a given year. Signing bonus money is always prorated (spread equally) over the remaining years of a contract. That means teams can convert all but the minimum of a player’s base salary to a signing bonus and reduce the cap hit at the expense of increasing dead money in future years.  June 1 designation: Another accounting trick for teams — after June 1 when a player is cut, the dead money is split over two years instead of all accelerating to the current year. Teams can designate two players per year as “June 1 cuts” and cut them before that date without the dead money hit, although they don’t get the resulting cap savings until after that date either.  Void years: Essentially “dummy” years that are added onto a deal, usually to help spread out the cap hits with restructures. They are not actual contract years that teams or players are required to fulfill.  If you’re a visual learner like me, Over The Cap’s team cap calculator is a handy little tool to play around with and get a sense of how all of these terms and numbers shake out in real life. I leaned on it heavily when breaking down the cap situations and path forward for these teams.  With the homework out of the way, let’s get into it… Dallas Cowboys: -$21.4 million Who knows what will happen over the next two months, but at this point I expect it to be a very, very quiet offseason for the Cowboys in 2024 — at least as quiet as it can be in Dallas. Though the current $21 million cap deficit will be easily manageable, the Cowboys don’t look like they’ll have the cap space to be as aggressive as they were even this past offseason.  Any big splashes the Cowboys make this offseason will likely come from extending homegrown players. Dallas has three candidates who will be candidates for huge new deals: QB Dak Prescott, WR CeeDee Lamb and LB Micah Parson. How they decide to navigate those negotiations will have a major impact on the rest of the offseason.  Prescott A Prime Priority The No. 1 priority for Dallas has to be an extension for Prescott, who will be entering the final year of his contract in 2024. Somehow Prescott has even more leverage than he did when he first signed his extension with Dallas, which came at the end of a long negotiating process where Prescott successfully stared the team down through two franchise tags and earned a deal worth $40 million a year — a number a lot of people were scoffing at less than a year before.  Prescott got a no-tag clause as a part of his extension, meaning he controls a path to unrestricted free agency in 2025 if he’s not extended. He has a cap hit of nearly $60 million in 2024, which adds another layer of motivation for Dallas to get a deal done ASAP this offseason. And because Prescott is a legitimate MVP candidate this year, he has leverage to push for high-end quarterback money, leverage he might not have had this past offseason when he was coming off a less productive year.  Based on how the quarterback market has moved since Prescott’s last deal, how his previous negotiations went and how much leverage he has now, I think Prescott’s extension this offseason would be for $50 million a year — minimum.  Maybe Dallas balks at that steep of an asking price, particularly given the other big deals that will be looming. The trade with the 49ers for QB Trey Lance was a thinly-veiled attempt from owner Jerry Jones to claw back a little bit of leverage in the situation. But the reality is the prospect of losing Prescott for nothing as an unrestricted free agent is not something most teams would stomach.  Depending on how the deal is structured, the Cowboys could save $20-$25 million on their 2024 cap with a new deal for Prescott. Technically they could also restructure his deal, as there are two void years on the contract, and save $21 million, but that puts them in a potentially worse bind in 2025 with no way to keep Prescott from hitting unrestricted free agency. One way or another, the team should get itself back in the black via whatever they do with Prescott. The rest of their budget for other moves will have to come from other sources.  The Lion & The Lamb There’s more urgency to reach a contractual solution with Prescott first, but Dallas has two other pillars of the team who are eligible for extensions.  Lamb is entering the final year of his rookie contract and is set to make just under $18 million from the fifth-year option in 2024. He’s not under contract past next season. Parsons, the former Penn State Nittany Lions star, is finishing up the third year of his contract and will have two more years to go once Dallas exercises his fifth-year option for the 2025 season. This offseason is the first time he’s eligible for a new deal.  The next in line should be Lamb since 2024 is a contract year, and a new extension would have the added benefit of potentially lowering his cap hit. Dallas has some time to do a deal with Parsons but given the high bar he’s set to start his career, he could push for sooner rather than later.  For most of the last decade, the Cowboys have been willing to do early extensions for first-round picks and even go to the top of the salary market at their respective positions as long as players were willing to sign five or six-year deals to give Dallas years of control on the back end. Former RB Ezekiel Elliott, C Travis Frederick and LT Tyron Smith all signed after their third seasons. Elliott and Frederick signed for six years and Smith signed for a whopping eight, adding up to 10 years of contract control for Dallas.  It hasn’t been cookie-cutter — Cowboys G Zack Martin signed a new deal entering his fifth-year option season, which is where Lamb will be in 2024. Elliott had to hold out to get his deal, too. But there’s been a general formula the Cowboys loved because of how quickly the growing cap changed the market at some positions. A player who signed for top dollar became a bargain by the third year and was still under contract for three more. It also gave the Cowboys a lot of flexibility to restructure or get out of a deal, as once the guaranteed money expires on a contract each year basically becomes a team option.  In recent years, players and agents have become more opposed to long deals that give them little upside or security on the back end. They want short deals with a higher percentage of money guaranteed and a chance for multiple bites at the free agency apple. The Cowboys haven’t been…

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