Stephen Jones: Dallas Cowboys not panicking over 2014 salary cap; ‘I see some light at the end of the tunnel’
By Jon Machota
jmachota@dallasnews.com
7:08 pm on October 21, 2013 |
The Dallas Cowboys have several young players that they’d like to sign to long-term deals in the near future. Dez Bryant, Tyron Smith, Bruce Carter and Dan Bailey immediately come to mind.
But will they have the salary cap space?
Some may be worrying that it will be difficult for the Cowboys to sign those players considering how little cap space they have going forward. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Sunday that the Cowboys are projected to be $31 million over the salary cap next year.
Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said Monday that the franchise is not panicking over such a figure.
“No surprises here,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan [KRLD-FM]. “We’ve known what we were up against. We knew what we were up against this year, and certainly know that we’re up against a very tight situation next year. We’ll certainly manage through that.
“The good news is we have a lot of good young players who are stepping up. That certainly eases the difficulty when you have good young guys stepping up and playing that we’re certainly going to be counting on next year. We’re certainly a little hand-cuffed as we move forward. That’s the nature of the business. We certainly know what’s coming at us and there’s no panic here. We’ll just work through it.”
The NFL penalized the Cowboys $10 million against the cap for front-loading contracts during an uncapped 2010 season. Jones and Co. split that in half over the last two seasons. With that penalty behind them next year, Jones says the 2014 cap is something they will “be able to work through.”
“These last couple of years we’ve been tight,” he said. “We worked through it and we’ll continue to work through it. I think I see some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of that easing up. After next year, I don’t think it will be quite as tight as it’s been.
“Obviously the imposed $5 million reduction we have from the NFL each of the last two years certainly had us pushing some things out to be able to operate. We certainly had to push some things into next year. These are things we’ll be able to work through. We’ll have our good young players out there and it’ll be, I think, very positive.”