Dallas City News

The calendar now reads June 2nd which is significant in the NFL. Welcome to the other side of June 1st.

In the NFL when players are released it is sometimes done with a post-June 1st designation.

A refresher on what exactly that means:

In the NFL’s accounting rules, any move involving dead cap that happens after June 1 is split into two seasons; the current upcoming season keeps that year’s dead cap number and the following season absorbs all of the future seasons’ dead cap. In the previous example, you have three seasons of $2 million each, but if you release him on June 2nd, the original $2 million million goes to the first season and the subsequent $4 million goes to the following season in order to not cripple your team’s cap position late in the process.

This is the example it is referring to.

For example, if there are three more years with $2 million of dead cap space in each season, the second and third seasons’ $2 million remaining automatically accelerates, making the dead cap owed in the current season $6 million (three seasons times $2 million).

Generally speaking the post-June 1st designation exists so that teams can release players in March and allow them the opportunity to find new homes while saving as much as they want to from an accounting perspective. It would be the worst kind of situation if teams had to wait until June to actually do it.

But even though the designation is set months earlier the salary cap relief that comes does not happen until June arrives which is why the subject is relevant today. When the Dallas Cowboys released Michael Gallup earlier this offseason they made him a post-June 1st designation.

While Gallup will carry a cap charge of $8.7M in 2025, there is now almost $10M opened up in 2024 by way of his release. Entering the month the Cowboys had $3.8M in cap space according to OverTheCap so if they want to get a little bit more active in things they now have the room to do so.