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With numerous big free agent decisions in front of them, the Cowboys are going to need all the cap room they can muster.

So they’re likely to fiddle with the numbers in quarterback Tony Romo’s contract to muster a bit more.

Via Drew Davison of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Cowboys are expected to do a simple restructure of Romo’s deal for a second consecutive year, converting most of his $17 million base salary into a bonus to prorate the cap hit over the remaining years of the deal.

“We all realize that anything you push forward that if you don’t use it it’ll cost you cap space that you could use for other players,” owner Jerry Jones said. “On an older player, the farther you put it out in the future the less likely you are to use it. That’s the point. That is the trick.

“On the other hand, the effort is to right now put together the best value we can using those dollars and that’s the art of the deal. I will tell you when I look at Tony I certainly do see four or five more years, so nothing scares me four or five years out.”

While that will eventually make the cap hit gigantic, and a severe burden for them in the latter years of the deal, Jones said his priority was to keep a good cast of players around Romo now.

“This was carefully thought out when we made our agreement with Tony,” Jones said. “We knew that as we moved along there will be reallocation is the best way to say it with his salary, moving it around so that at a given time we could put the best group together with his supporting cast.”

The can-kicking is fine, for now, as long as Romo stays healthy and the Cowboys continue to win. When those things stop happening, they’re going to have to go through another set of cap limitations, which could be tougher than the ones the league imposed on them in 2012.