What matters with the cap is this year. If he’s tagged thats 37-40 million all against the cap as opposed to a long term deal that can make that number 20 million. That means there won’t be any room for meaningful free agents on defense and will be more cuts on current players that may ha e otherwise factored into the future.
Maybe not, but first of all I don't want a bunch of free agents, Dallas has shown they haven't a clue how to do that, just stick with the draft. Not that the Cowboys have had tremendous success in the draft, but it's better than their free agent selections.
But even if you want to get free agents, the same old "there's no money for free agents/signing the players you want" has been shown time and again simply not to be true. The Saints are supposedly like $110 mil over the cap, but will you see them sign no free agents and cut half the team? No, the cap is so convoluted, and has so many options that just very seldom happens, and if it does it's because they want to change up the team just because they aren't winning SBs. Like in the Cowboys, case, there's an easy $1.22 mil savings available simply but cutting Chris Jones, Niswander did at least as good a job as Jones was doing. And that's just one player, there are others that could be cut that you don't want anyway, there are restructures available, etc.
Third, the cap was assumed to be $175 mil for months, then in the last few weeks it's now apparently going to be $180, and just yesterday on PFT Florio indicated he's been told it'll be more like $182-3 mil. The "Cowboys can't pay Dak $37.6 mil" was based originally on the $175 mil figure, so if the $182 mil is accurate, there may be another $7 mil "extra" available towards Dak's tag figure, at least $5 mil..
And the Cowboys knew for the past couple of years there was going to be a ton of free agents this year, undoubtedly some of them were going to be released or cut, they couldn't have signed all of them even if they wanted to, and some they didn't want anyway.
Yes there is work to be done on the cap, and not saying the Cowboys won't let some players go that they'd like to keep, or won't be able to target several high-priced free agents they covet. But it's not guaranteed doom and gloom for the Cowboys this year, player-wise, there are things that can happen, and I'm better will happen.
Hang it there!
