As of Thursday, the Cowboys were more than $6.6 million over the 2011 salary cap. They’ve likely trimmed a large amount of that deficit via a restructuring of the contract of Pro Bowl linebacker DeMarcus Ware.
“The process is already finished,” Ware told Rainer Sabin of the Dallas Morning News on Thursday. “I don’t want to get into any numbers or anything like that. It’s done. I did whatever I needed to do to help the team.”
For Ware, helping the team likely meant taking right now a huge chunk of 2011 salary that would have been paid out in 17 game checks. So it’s not really much of a sacrifice.
Sabin speculates that the Cowboys may have saved up to $5.4 million in 2011 cap dollars via the maneuver, which would push that money into future years.