Cowboys: How much money Tyron Smith is losing per game missed

Entering Week 4, Dallas Cowboys left tackle Tyron Smith isn't practicing just yet and appears to be on track to miss Sunday's showdown versus Bill Belichick's New England Patriots. If so, it'll be Smith's second consecutive game out after surprisingly riding the bench last Sunday in Arizona. This got me thinking about some of the […]

Mauricio Rodriguez — Dallas Cowboys News Writer

Sep 29, 2023 2:40 PM EDT

Entering Week 4, Dallas Cowboys left tackle Tyron Smith isn't practicing just yet and appears to be on track to miss Sunday's showdown versus Bill Belichick's New England Patriots. If so, it'll be Smith's second consecutive game out after surprisingly riding the bench last Sunday in Arizona.

This got me thinking about some of the financial details behind the story. Do y'all remember Tyron's deal got reworked earlier in the season when the Cowboys took a good chunk of his deal and turned it into play-time incentives? Let's take a look at it once more to freshen up our memories as to how it worked and how much money is at stake every week for No. 77.

Let's break it down. During the regular season, Tyron Smith can earn $1 million for reaching 50% of the team's snap counts. And then another million for 55%, another for 60%, all the way up to 90%. In total, he can make $9 million for playing 90% of the snaps.

So how much is he losing per game? It's a tricky question to answer because every game is different in terms of how many snaps are played. To illustrate this, consider the Cowboys ran 55 offensive plays in Week 1 only to run 83 one week later and 75 last Sunday. It changes a lot.

So with that in mind, for a broader sample size, we'll look at league averages over the last four years and go with 63 snaps per game. That number is consistent year over year so it's certainly reasonable to use it. Therefore: 

The math will change as it isn't perfect in Smith's individual case considering the variance of snaps from game to game and from team to team (the Cowboys averaged over 65 snaps per game in 2022, for instance). But the above logic suggests two games missed could cost Tyron Smith his first million (90% is the first checkpoint from top to bottom) in play-time incentives while setting him up to lose another million if he misses a third game. And basically another million each game after that. 

Expecting him to lose at least 5% of the snaps each week he misses is a conservative estimate. If he eventually misses 50% of the snaps, he'd completely miss out on the $9 million. 

Ultimately, you hate to see this situation arise for Tyron. He's a class act and a future Hall of Famer. We hope he can beat the odds and play on Sunday and if that's not the case, hopefully, he'll be ready to go by Week 5 when the Cowboys travel to San Francisco. We're rooting for him to make his well-deserved money.

If Cowboys clear one specific hurdle, they can dominate the Patriots

Perfect bounce-back opportunity.