The Dallas Cowboys made a couple of moves on Friday which didn’t impact the state of the current roster but instead paved the way for some potential returns or additions. They’ll need to make more, however, if they are to be involved in free agency starting on Monday. Mind you, this isn’t even discussing being real players in the race for talent; that feels like chasing a unicorn.
This is in regards to doing much of anything, including their annual sign-their-own-bargain-shop-other-teams strategy. Converting base salary to bonus, Dallas shaved a little over $30 million to their cap space with the adjustments to Dak Prescott and Zack Martin’s deals. But because they were already over the cap, Tony Pollard’s pending franchise tag put them even more in the red. Dallas was $16 million over, according to Over the Cap; the moves gave them just $14.5 million in usable space and that’s not enough.
Dallas will want to carry at least $5 million worth of space into the regular season, and the draft class will take away another $3 million. That’s $8 million the club needs to earmark, meaning that they’ll only have $6.5 million of effective cap space to use.
Dallas currently has 57 players under contract, so they are already above the Top 51 threshold. 51 players of the 90-man offseason roster count against the salary cap, which is $224.8 million in 2023 (plus the Cowboys’ 2022 rollover of another $5.5 million). Each player they sign for more than the minimum will knock someone out of the Top 51, so their impact on the cap will be slightly less.
For instance, if Dallas signs a player to a one-year, $6.75 million deal it would use up $6 million of cap space because they’d be pushing a player making $750,000 out of the Top 51.
That’s not giving Dallas much of an opportunity to do anything, so here are five ways they could create more cap space. They don’t have to make these moves now, but could pull the trigger next week, next month or even after the draft.