Now he says it!
Tony Romo said the subject never came up at length, but he would have been willing to take a pay cut to keep DeMarco Murray. Romo spoke at length to “The Ben & Skin Show” of 105.3 The Fan as part of an offseason interview on Tuesday afternoon.
“DeMarco ended up asking me, he was like ‘Why don’t you take a pay cut,’” Romo said. “I was like ‘I will! I would take a pay cut to go do this.’”
Romo is far and away the Cowboys’ most expensive player, with an average salary of $18 million and a 2015 salary cap hit of $27 million – nearly 20 percent of the team’s salary cap for the year. The veteran quarterback, who will turn 35 next month, said he and Murray joked about the topic during the lead up to free agency.“I was like ‘They’re going to restructure,’ and that’s the same thing in some ways – for salary cap purposes. He was like ‘Ok, now we’re back to being friends again,’” Romo said. “I was like ‘You’re really Dworried about me? I would take $5 million less if it meant getting you back,’ and he knew that. It was just funny how he was worried about that part of it for like a week, and I’m like ‘That’s not the reason. Obviously, I’ll restructure. I would even take a pay cut.’”
By restructuring the contract, Dallas could have converted most of Romo’s 2015 salary into a signing bonus, effectively reducing his cap hit to just $1 million and pushing the largest cost into the future.