Cowboys' Brandon Carr thinks he's a "team player" for restructuring

This time every year, you see teams restructuring contracts to get themselves under the salary cap or just to free up room to make more moves.

One such player is Cowboys' CB Brandon Carr, who thinks that doing so makes him a great team player.

"I restructured my contract basically just to free up some money to get some more players in," Carr said Friday, according to the Dallas Morning News. "I'm a team player. I believe in getting as many guys as possible that can help us get to our goal, and that's to win a championship.

"This is another step in the right direction, not only myself, but other guys restructured as well. That's a good sign that guys are willing to restructure their contracts in order to get new guys in or get better guys in to help us, hopefully, get a Super Bowl."

Only here's the thing... Carr didn't sacrifice anything. The team converted all but about $700k of his $14 million base salary to bonus money. He doesn't give up a dime and literally nothing changes for him but the team gets to spread the cap hit over the life of the contract. His base salary this year was already guaranateed.

And this was the case with the other Cowboys as well. Not only did they not give up any money at all, they gained more guaranteed bonus money. And that's fine for them to do, it's very common around the leauge... but don't act like a hero because you let the team perform some accounting tricks without changing your compensation whatsoever.

I'm picking on a Cowboy here, but you see this from players around the league all the time. There are times when a guy gives up money in a deal. Michael Vick did this year, but that wasn't altruistic either. He was going to get cut otherwise. For the most part, these restructures are just accounting tricks. Teams pushing money forward to make more room in the short term.