Amari Cooper $100M Contract Details: Round Numbers & a Cowboys Escape Hatch

Amari Cooper $100M Contract Details: Round Numbers & a Cowboys Escape Hatch

FRISCO - Amari Cooper has been re-secured by the Dallas Cowboys with what in big, round numbers adds up to a five-year deal worth $100 million. That's the stuff of "Cowboy for Life'' - clearly Cooper's desire - but in addition to the big, round numbers there is an important Dallas escape hatch.

As first detailed by NFL Network's Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero), who describes it as "perhaps the simplest contract ever'':

*Cooper gets a $10 million signing bonus

*He gets a $10 million salary in 2020

*He gets (on paper) a $20 million salary for each year of the final four years of the deal (2021-through-'24)

*$40 mil is fully guaranteed at signing, with, as Tom writes, "another $20 million for injury until March 2022. So that's the trigger.''

"The trigger'' is what we around here like to call an "escape hatch.'' It's what makes apparent five-year commitments into what can actually be a shorter commitment.

In this case, really, a two-year commitment. 

Cooper's cap numbers, Tom reports, are similarly simple: $12 mil, $22 mil, $22 mil, $22 mil and $22 mil. So what happens if after two years Amari isn't the player Dallas hoped it was getting? The Cowboys will have paid him $40 million ... and can be done with him.

The $20 million APY is therefore real; it puts Cooper in the upper level with Julio Jones of the Falcons at $22 million, who has the highest APY for a receiver in NFL history. But it might be for less than the five years. And if it's only two years, that ballyhooed "$60 million in guarantees'' actually becomes just $40 mil.

"I love being a Dallas Cowboy,'' Cooper said recently, mentioning the "Cowboy for Life'' mantra. The big, round numbers show that the Cowboys love him, too. But the escape hatch shows that love has its limits.