How much money do the Cowboys have in cap space? Dallas’ offseason frugality explained

The Dallas Cowboys are the richest team in all of professional sports thanks to Jerry Jones’ business genius. And yet, this offseason, they’re acting like they’re allergic to spending money. It’s pretty typical for the Cowboys not to make big moves in free agency, but what has people in a panic now is that they’re not even spending the money on the stars they already have on the squad.

With quarterback Dak Prescott’s and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb’s contracts entering into their final year, and linebacker Micah Parson’s coming up shortly after that, it would be a great time to get a deal going to extend them, especially when some of them are threatening to miss training camp if a deal isn’t reached before then. (Training camp starts July 24, and a deal has not been made with any of them.)

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Oh, and they also let several of their good players walk out the door. Tony Pollard, Michael Gallup, Tyler Biadsz, and Dorance Armstrong were all able to get nice deals done with other teams. Dallas signed running back Ezekiel Elliott, who they let go a year before - not exactly the solution that’s getting them to the Super Bowl. And yet…it was perhaps a smart financial move, considering they were already paying him the dead money - may as well pay him to play for you, right?

So in summary, the Cowboys have made no upgrades in free agency, have not re-signed Prescott, Lamb, or Parsons, have let other valuable players walk, had an uneventful draft in April, have not fired or extended coach Mike McCarthy’s contract, and brought back one mediocre running back from the past.

The Cowboys were the lowest-spending team in the offseason by more than $50 million. They spent an NFL-low of $16.5 million in free agency. How do we explain this rather extraordinary frugality?

Are the Cowboys in financial trouble?

Do the Cowboys just not want to spend the money or is there a real issue here? While Prescott is in the last year of his contract, the Cowboys have only accounted for $50 million of the $160 million four-year deal. There are a few other players they still need to account for who aren’t even under contract after this season as well - Demarcus Lawrence will cost them another $29 million, Zack Martin another $50 million, and Brandin Cooks, another $16 million.

They’re also dealing with about $30 million in dead money for Ezekiel Elliott, Michael Gallup, Tyron Smith, Leighton Vander Esch, and Dorance Armstrong.

How much do the Cowboys have in available cap space?

The Cowboys have only $10.1 million in cap space available, so adding anyone significant from free agency at this point is unlikely. They will either have to work with what they’ve got, or make some trades to create more cap space before the start of the season.

The available space does give them a little room to get at least one deal done with either Prescott, Lamb, or Parsons. Other players have been upping the market price with the deals they’ve been getting done recently, so the longer the Cowboys wait, the more expensive their star players become.

However, we do have to consider that the salary cap also goes up as time goes on. It has gone consistently up every year (with the exception of the fallout from Covid-19 in 2021) and it will continue to do so. So waiting until the fall to re-sign a player actually isn’t the worst idea. As long as the overall money spent doesn’t affect the purchasing power for the Cowboys, there is really no damage done.

Prescott can ask for more than the highest-paid quarterback in the league, which is currently Joe Burrow at $55 million, and still be affordable to the Cowboys. Now, if he ends up asking for $60 million, they’ll have a bit of a struggle. But as long as he stays around $59 million, considering how much the cap is likely to increase, they shouldn’t have an issue. The same argument can be made for Lamb, with different maximum numbers.

No matter which player they decide to prioritize, the Cowboys will eventually have to make a deal and pay the market price for their stars. And they will. They surely aren’t going to let Prescott walk away after this season with no plan at the quarterback position. Even if he makes up 22% of the cap this year, it’ll go down to around 18% by 2028.

“Timing is obviously as important as the principle amount,” said Jerry Jones. “Sometimes timing can keep you from making a mistake. That’s not just football. That’s not just the salary cap. That’s any decisions that you’ve got to have some ambiguity up to a bright line. The bright line is when it’s done.”

“It’s not, ‘Boy, they should’ve done that last week because the price of tea in China went up.’ That’s not the way you do it, frankly. Certainly not the way we do it, and I’ve seen criticism that we wait too long to sign players or those kinds of things. They certainly have looked back and said had they have done it five years ago and when the price of living was much down then. Well, that might’ve been the case, but we wanted to see how a couple of players played and whether or not we want to keep them around. Again, no decision is based solely on that decision or that scope, that person, that thing. Because of the nature of the cap, it affects everybody down the line, so that has a big bearing on that, too.”