Cowboys had existing contractual right to restructure CeeDee Lamb's contract

When the news landed on Tuesday that the Cowboys have created $20 million in cap space by restructuring the contract of receiver CeeDee Lamb, some applauded Lamb for his selflessness. Lamb himself fueled the perception that he did the team a favor, tweeting this: "I want to win. It’s gonna take more than just myself."

While that statement may indeed be entirely true and accurate in all respects, Lamb did nothing to spark the restructuring the Cowboys performed to create more 2025 cap wiggle room.

The Lamb contract, like most big-money veteran deals, includes a term that expressly authorizes the team to restructure the deal, whenever it wants.

From the contract: "Player and Club agree that on one or more occasion(s) and at any time during the duration of this NFL Player Contract, the Club, in its sole discretion, shall have the right, but not the obligation, to convert any portion of the Player's Paragraph 5 Salary into Signing Bonus."

As to Lamb's fully-guaranteed $26.85 million 2025 Paragraph 5 salary, the contract provides that "if Club exercises its right to convert any portion of Player's 2025 Paragraph 5 Salary into a Signing Bonus, then his 2025 Paragraph 5 Guarantee shall be reduced by the amount equal to the portion of the Player's 2025 Paragraph 5 Salary that as converted to Signing Bonus."

Lamb's minimum salary this year is $1.17 million. The Cowboys had the automatic right to convert $25.675 million into a bonus. By spreading it over five years, $5.135 applies to 2025 — and $20.54 million gets move to future years.

It's not free cap space. Lamb's cap burden increases for each of the remaining years of the deal by $5.136 million, with another $5.136 million that spills into the first year after the contract expires.

Lamb will still make $26.85 million this year. And it's actually better for him, because the $25.675 million gets paid out in Texas, where the income tax rate is 0.0 percent.

Regardless, Lamb did nothing to make this happen. His contract from last year gave the Cowboys the right to do it. It's become a very common term; in the early years of the current cap-based system, teams had to persuade the player to do it. Now, teams routinely do it without any new agreement from the player, because the contract the player has already signed allows the team to do it.