Can Eagles deal with Wentz - with 'option bonuses' - close Cowboys contract gap with Dak?

Can Eagles deal with Wentz - with 'option bonuses' - close Cowboys contract gap with Dak?

FRISCO - The Dallas Cowboys and Dak Prescott have the same ultimate contractual goal, to "bet the future on'' the QB, as owner Jerry Jones recently told me. But in terms of actual dollars and cents, they are not yet on the same page. And if “not close'' is the buzz phrase of the moment as training camp moves from Oxnard to Honolulu and now to Frisco, Carson Wentz would seem to be among the reasons.

Logically, now that the Philadelphia Eagles' fourth-year QB is a $30-mil-a-year-plus guy, Prescott and CAA have their high-jump bar fairly set. I would add that Dak’s “destined threshold” here might be lower and more reasonable than many observers assume. (In other words, maybe he’s not “demanding” to match or exceed Wentz’ APY, despite the reported "$40-mil demand.''

Oh, and one more thing: As owner Jerry Jones told a handful of us the other night in Honolulu, Dallas is committed to "top-tier'' money here. Said Jones: “Coming up on the money is really not that issue with Dak. A lot of people question whether Dak is one of the guys who need to be in the top tier. I have never questioned that. ... I don’t think there is any doubt that he is at the top level of paid quarterbacks. There is no question in my mind about that. Now how we make this all fit to have the best team around him, that is what we are trying to work on.”

So, let's do some work. ... because maybe there is another factor in Wentz' contract, besides the headline-grabbing APY number, that provides a template.

From what we can gather (with the great help of colleague Joey Ickes), the Eagles' template here is available for teams looking to commit long-term to players beyond the end of the current CBA without violating the 30-Percent Rules associated with the end of the agreement.

In Wentz’s deal, the Eagles utilized an “option bonus” of $30 million in 2020, which happens to be the second year of the deal. This mechanism functions as a “second signing bonus,” which is prorated over five years for cap accounting.

This is important, because unlike signing bonuses, “option bonuses” are included in the calculation for the 30-Percent Rule, which increases the baseline for annual pay increases, while still providing the salary cap flexibility that teams rely on.

In addition to the option bonus, the Eagles included approximately $17 million in “Not Likely to Be Earned Escalators” in the years 2021, 2022, and 2023. These escalators increase Wentz’s base salary by $11 million in 2021, and $3 million in both 2022 and 2023 if any one of a wide variety of performance markers are reached by Wentz or the Eagles as a whole in 2020, including Wentz making the Pro Bowl.

This is a clever clause, because for the purposes of cap accounting in the current CBA, these escalators don’t count and are not applied to the 30-Percent Rule calculations, as they are considered “Not Likely to be Earned” by the letter of the law, but according to multiple reports, there are so many paths to unlock them that it is a virtual certainty.

So, by the end of 2020, when the 30-Percent Rule is no longer a concern and there’s a new CBA in place, Wentz will receive those nice bumps in pay.

This tool can of course be used on the other Cowboys contractual concerns. It can help the Ezekiel Elliott negotiations. But it also provides a large loophole for the Cowboys and Dak Prescott to step through together ... making the $30-mil-plus APY number fully attractive to the player and far for palatable for the team. ... and if Dak’s “demand threshold” is actually lower than $40 mil, as I suspect, making this all the more doable.