FRISCO – It’s not official yet that the Dallas Cowboys are going to go on a spending spree with the $100 million they can create in 2025 cap room.
But as of Thursday, we do have a new official number from the NFL.
The league is increasing its salary cap to $279.2 million per team.
That marks an increase of $23.8 million over the previous year … though we should note that in the calculations we’ve been doing for months, it does not change much about what we’ve predicted Dallas can (will?) do.
The league’s recent announcement of a bigger salary cap for the 2025 season was already issued, with the NFL saying that the cap will increase somewhere between $277-281 million, up about $22 million per team.
Meanwhile … The national narrative is that the Cowboys are perpetually in “salary cap Hell,” but we have been outlining for months how they could have as much as $100 million worth of room with a couple of shrewd moves. (See below.)
All along – again, dating back to CowboysCountry.com’s original reporting in February 2024 – this was about 2024 being a year that wouldn’t be about the Joneses investing resources, choosing instead to “keep our powder dry” for a quick and timely “Blow It Up” and remodel for 2025.
And now 2025 is here. And so is the skepticism and cynicism.
The “Blow It Up” plan happened. And while there are no guarantees that this will work .. the resources are available.
We don’t know that the Cowboys will buy wisely 2025 NFL free agency. Until it starts unfolding, and soon, we can’t even promise that they will buy at all.
But factually, it is perfectly clear that Dallas set itself up to have in the range of a whopping $100 million in cap room for this upcoming season. In Dallas’ case, there will be a 2024 carryover of $25 million (cap space “powder” the Joneses purposely did not use this year). … and that $25 million can be tacked onto the $279.2 million to give the Cowboys an effective cap of over $300 million.
Now Jerry and Stephen just need to go shopping.