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The lull before free agency is always a time of heavy-duty forecasting. Analysts across the football landscape scrutinize rosters, double-check salary cap numbers, and check their front office and agent sources as they try to predict which moves each club will make as they start to assemble their 2024 teams.
It’s a time when everyone knows that walking papers are coming for some.
Three top outlets have put together their lists of cut candidates, and they’re all in agreement that one playmaker’s time in Dallas may be nearing an end as the Cowboys look to make a dent in the second-largest cap overage in the NFC.
NFL.com, PFF, and The Athletic all name wide receiver Michael Gallup as a potential cap casualty.
The soon-to-be-28-year-old may have peaked in 2019 when he topped 1,100 receiving yards and scored six touchdowns. His 2020 suffered with the loss of quarterback Dak Prescott and the arrival of CeeDee Lamb. The next year saw him miss eight games with a calf malady and then tear an ACL in Week 17. He was a shadow of his former self in 2022 as he fought to come back from that injury, and although he played in all 17 games this past season, he averaged just two catches per contest and finished with a career low in yards.
Gallup clearly hasn’t been the player the Cowboys thought they were getting when he signed a new contract on 2022, a deal that still has three years to go on it.
PFF suggests a salary reduction, from $8.5 million to the $4 million Gallup currently has guaranteed for injury; that amount will vest to fully guaranteed a few days into the new league year.
The Athletic‘s Jon Machota notes that if the Cowboys make Gallup a post-June 1 cut, they’ll be left with $13 million in dead cap, a move that “would only save Dallas about $800,00 in 2024 because his cap hit for the upcoming season is $13.85 million.”
NFL.com actually offers up Gallup and Brandin Cooks as possible cuts, stating that “neither… seem like a fit for the WR2 shoes behind CeeDee Lamb and either/both would save the team money if released.”
Cooks could be seen as worth bringing back. It took him a while to mesh with the offense in his first year wearing the star, but the veteran came on stronger as the season progressed and scored six of his eight touchdowns from November on.
Unfortunately, the team likely knows for certain what it has in Gallup. And while the former third-round draft pick has provided some memorable highlight-reel grabs during his six seasons, the writing may be on the wall, and a new chapter may be coming.