The Dallas Cowboys Will Have Money to Spend in 2016
By Reid Hanson
Unlike previous offseasons, the Dallas Cowboys will have money to spend in free agency this year.
The 2015 NFL season has been very unkind to the Dallas Cowboys. A year that began with Super Bowl aspirations ended with an embarrassing 4-12 record (their worst since 1989) and a vast offseason to-do list. The good news is the Dallas Cowboys actually have some money to spend on that daunting task list they face.
According to numbers procured from overthecap.com, once you factor in salary cap growth, unused spending from 2015, and dead money, the Dallas Cowboys are currently slated to have somewhere between $12M and $14M to play with in free agency. While this number may not seem like an extraordinarily large sum, it’s more than the Cowboys are used to having and with a little tinkering, it could become substantially more.
One very notable element of the Dallas Cowboys cap situation is the lack of dead money that so often torments this frivolously spending franchise. No longer buying everything on credit, the Dallas Cowboys are now finally seeing the benefits of their fiscal responsibility.
Heading into the 2016 season, the Cowboys will only have $901,076 haunting them in dead money. Consider that one player, Jasper Brinkley, counts for 2/3rds of that, and you have a pretty ideal financial situation.
Unfortunately, financial breathing room means very little if you’re sporting a 4-12 record on the season. Considering it was just two offseasons ago the Dallas Cowboys were deep in the red. They had to cut DeMarcus Ware for financial reasons and bargain hunt their way to building a 53-man roster. How did that end up? A league best 12-4 record.
In other words, financial health is all well and good but if you’re team stinks, who really cares?
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I’m not trying to tout the benefits of irresponsible spending, nor am I diminishing the advantageous financial situation the Cowboys are currently in. I’m just putting it in perspective and saying on-the-field success needs to be priority #1, #2, and #3. But if you’re going to stink, then having money to spend is a good thing and that’s exactly where the Dallas Cowboys are today.
With a likely $12-$14 million at their disposal, the Cowboys will be able to address some problematic areas of their team. Not all of them, but it can certainly buy them some breathing room heading into the 2016 NFL Draft and allow them to draft by “best player available” (BPA) rather than mostly by “need”.
The thing to keep in mind is the Cowboys can still create more cap space by cutting and restructuring current contracts. We’ll look at some players that could be impacted by this on Thursday in, Dallas Cowboys: Breaking Bad (Contracts) in 2016. You can basically guess who some of the top underachieving/overpaid players that litter that list are, but again, we’ll get into them on Thursday…
Like most offseasons, I think the Cowboys will look at some of their largest deals and restructure them to create cap room. I don’t think that much, if anything, will be done with Tony Romo’s contract. His cap number of $20.835M is digestible (considering how much NFL QBs get paid) and I don’t think the Cowboys want to kick the can again on their injury-prone and aged signal caller.
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Tyron Smith, $14M, and Dez Bryant, $13M, are both young men and in the early portions of their deals. The Cowboys could easily find another $15M in cap space from them – should the front office find the need.
Alas, I do not think free agency will be all that more exciting than what we’ve been accustomed to. I think the high-priced spending of the past is largely behind us and the Dallas Cowboys are dedicated to building the team through the draft and only using free agency to plug holes.
What this all really means is the Cowboys won’t be forced to cut players for financial purposes. They will still cut, but it will be for reasons other than solely financial. The extra cash can go to retaining players and investing in players they know, rather than rolling the dice on players they don’t know.
We’ve heard it before a thousand times, “Free agents are free agents for a reason.” Implying that something is wrong or they wouldn’t be available.
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The Dallas Cowboys are in a good place this offseason – as good as can be expected from a 4-12 team, that is. They have needs, but don’t have glaring holes that can’t be taken care of. The health of Tony Romo and Dez Bryant are still the single biggest keys to success in 2016 and they seem to be well on track.