In a stunning late upset, it’s the capped-out Cowboys giving kicker Dan Bailey a seven-year contract!!! OK, maybe this isn’t a real award, but I had to find a space to talk about it. This, even for Jerry Jones, is a stunningly dumb move. The Cowboys just handed Bailey a deal that guarantees him $7.5 million and averages $3.2 million per year. They have absolutely no cap flexibility and need to save every penny they can, which would leave kicker — the most fungible position in football and a place where you can find competent guys as undrafted free agents every single year like, not coincidentally, Dan Bailey — as an obvious place to try to save money.
There’s nothing wrong with Bailey — he’s a fine kicker. Football Outsiders suggests that he’s been worth 16.5 points over average on field goals over the past three years, even while he’s been almost exactly league-average on kickoffs. And yes, some of the length of the deal is to pad out the money involved and spread the signing bonus over a longer period. When you’re doing that to create the cap space needed to lock up a kicker, you’re probably doing something stupid. Put it this way: There are nine players signed through 2019, and they’re almost all superstars.3 Cutler and Bailey are now the only players signed through 2020. Thanks, Jerry!
