Dallas Cowboys will restructure Tony Romo’s contract

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo has agreed to restructure his contract, freeing up $12.8 million in cap space for the team, according to a source.

In essence, the Cowboys are turning $16 million of Romo’s $17 million base salary into a bonus to give them more flexibility this off-season. Romo would have had an NFL-high cap hit of $27.773 million before this restructure.

The newly-created space will allow the Cowboys to make their one-year agreement with linebacker Rolando McClain official, give them the ability to absorb Greg Hardy’s rising salary cap figure during the season based on games played and opens up room to sign players from the upcoming draft.

And, yes, it gives them greater flexibility to continue to be active this off-season in acquiring players, possibly even Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson.

This will only add to the speculation of Peterson to the Cowboys, but that is not why this restructure was done.

Owner Jerry Jones said early on in the off-season that restructuring Romo’s contract was likely, and this is simply the point where it made the most sense to pull the trigger on it. The negative to this restructure is that it will add an additional $3.2 million cap hit in each season for Romo’s final four years from 2016-19.

Romo hinted at the restructure during a radio interview on 105.3 The Fan on Tuesday, and also said he expressed to DeMarco Murray that he would be willing to take a pay cut in order for the Cowboys to keep him.

But the Cowboys never asked Romo to take a pay cut and Murray eventually landed a lucrative deal with the Philadelphia Eagles.

“DeMarco ended up asking me, ‘Why don’t you take a pay cut?’ I said, ‘I will. I would take a pay cut to go do this,’” Romo said. “I was like, ‘They’re going to restructure me.’ That’s the same thing in some ways, just for the salary cap purposes. He was like, ‘OK, now we’re back to being friends again.’ I would take $5 million less if it meant getting him back.

“He knew that. It was just funny how he was literally worried about that part of it for a week. I’m like, ‘That’s not the reason.’ I’m like, ‘Obviously I’ll restructure. I would even take a pay cut.’ He was like, ‘OK, we can be friends again.’ It’s amazing what you think about in those moments.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 12:55 PM with the headline "Dallas Cowboys will restructure Tony Romo’s contract."