Updated Cowboys salary-cap space on the year's biggest shopping day

At a quick glance, the Dallas Cowboys' salary-cap situation looks dire. After all, Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and Micah Parsons' combined cap number for the 2025 season is set to be roughly $146.65 million. And as the 2025 NFL salary cap is projected to be approximately $273 million, those three alone would account for more than 53% of the team's yearly allocations.

But that's not how things will play out.

From a technical standpoint at this moment, the Cowboys have roughly $22.397 million in remaining cap space for this season, which Jerry Jones should in no way touch whatsoever.

But even with the big contracts of DeMarcus Lawrence, Zack Martin, and Brandin Cooks coming off the books, not to mention the Trey Lance contract that Jones should have never brought into the mix, America's Team is only projected to have $23.987 million in new cap space once the 2025 league year begins.

The reason for the low number, of course, is the aforementioned issue with Prescott, Lamb, and Parsons. But again, that's not how things will play out.

The Cowboys' salary-cap situation isn't as dire as it looks

Assuming the Cowboys don't spend any additional money this season, the rollover would give Dallas over $46 million in cap space, according to Over The Cap. But here's where the real fun begins.

As it stands now, Prescott's cap number for 2025 is a whopping $89.882 million. However, as language was built into his contract that will allow Jones to spread money into future void years, Dak's cap hit will likely be closer to $50-$60 million.

The same goes for CeeDee Lamb, whose 2025 cap number is supposed to be $35.45 million but will probably be closer to $15-$20 million.

Parsons hasn't gotten his monster extension yet but is still set to have a cap hit of $21.324 million, as he'll be playing next season on his fifth-year option. His 2025 cap number will likely depend on whether he gets his new deal.

If he does, Jerry would likely move more money around and drop his 2025 hit to about half what it's supposed to be.

Add all that up, and the Cowboys could conceivably add $55-$70 million to that $46 million they should already have.

Now, we're not saying it will all go down exactly like this, nor do we know if Jones would even do anything if he had more than $100 million to spend. We're just saying that restructuring will be done and that things aren't as bad for the Cowboys as they may seem, at least in terms of the salary cap.

What's happened on the field and with the coaching staff is an entirely different story. But we'll save that for another day.

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