When the Cowboys extended Dak last season they gave him an $80m signing bonus and this will mean they will take on a substantial amount of dead cap in this trade. While his extension was worth $60m a year we can see from what the Cleveland Browns would be taking on $52.25m less than that over the four years because the Cowboys have front loaded the cash.

The dead cap for the Cowboys would be $103,216,667 in 2025 which is only slightly higher than his current cap number for 2025 of $89,896,666. If this was the Cleveland Browns and many other teams they would be restructuring all of their big numbers to getting as much salary cap space to roll this over to future years or spend in free agency. Jerry Jones doesn’t appear to like spending money on his team and ranks 32nd on cash spending per the NFLPA/Over The Cap over the last four years. This opens the door to make it slightly possible.

If they were to do this trade they would need to be restructuring players like CeeDee Lamb, Terence Steele, Trevon Diggs, Donovan Wilson, Malik Hooker and DaRon Bland. Extending Micah Parsons to get his cap number down. Plus stoping guys like Zack Martin and Demarcus Lawrence from having their contracts void so their current dead cap can be spread out.

Personally I think this is highly unlikely and the aim is probably to get Travis Hunter if Deion Sanders gets the job but you can never rule things like this out. It would potentially be one where you aren’t getting a crazy return on the picks to move from 2nd to 12th in the draft as the Cowboys are taking on so much dead cap having front loaded the extension.