The Dallas Cowboys avoided using the franchise tag on standout defensive lineman Osa Odighizuwa by signing him to a four-year, $80 million deal on Tuesday. Reports stated the Cowboys were planning on using the tag to keep him from reaching free agency if a deal wasn’t reached by the March 4 deadline.
It’s a good move by the Cowboys, but also an unusual and surprising one. That’s because most are familiar with the fact that the front office, ran by Jerry and Stephen Jones, usually takes its time when handling mega-deals with its best players. We’ve seen it plenty of times in the past, most recently with CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott. Hell, you can even lump Micah Parsons in that category, too.
The Cowboys were smart to get this deal done ahead of guys like Milton Williams and Levi Onwuzurike, who are projected to get rather large paydays. Doing so not only keeps Odighizuwa’s camp from using their deals as potential negotiating points, but it also allowed them to bypass an NFL trend that typically comes with players that are either about to be tagged or are actually tagged.
It’s the fact that if tagged, Odighizuwa’s 2025 salary was going to be $25 million if he and the Cowboys couldn’t reach a deal before the July deadline. Typically, the deal that players in his position receive averages more per year than the tag does. That’s clearly not the case with Odighizuwa, who is getting $20 million per year. The Cowboys were able to avoid paying him an average annual salary of more than $25 million, which is not only beneficial, but weird when considering how they’ve handled these situations in the past.
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“Consider the one-year franchise tag would have been $25 million and two franchise tags, which basically is how you work out what a long-term deal should be, would have been $55 million,” NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said on the network’s Up To The Minute news segment. “So basically, the Dallas Cowboys saved themselves about $15 million over two years by doing this deal now. There’s nothing wrong with the deal for Osa Odighizuwa – he’s got big-time security and wealth.
“But for the Dallas Cowboys, getting this deal done early [and] doing it now saves them a ton of money to use elsewhere on the roster.”
The Cowboys have certainly taken a lot of flack for how they handle business and rightfully so. This move, however, is a refreshing change-of-pace and who knows, maybe it’s how they approach things as a whole throughout the offseason.
