When Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said the team didn’t add any special protections in the Dez Bryant contract, some wondered whether it was a matter of semantics, given that the Cowboys previously had beefed up the language that would trigger a voiding of guaranteed payments in some recent contracts, including the one signed by first-round cornerback Byron Jones.
As it turns out, the Cowboys truly didn’t attach any special protections to the Dez deal.
Per a league source, the Cowboys used the standard language for voiding guaranteed payments. As the source explained it, teams are sufficiently protected by the boilerplate language in the standard contract, along with other protections contained in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.