'Cap Hell' Cowboys Shock Critics With Top-10 Ranking

FRISCO - How many times, Dallas Cowboys fans, have you heard it?

"The Cowboys are in Cap Hell.''

"Dallas is drowning in debt.''

"The dead money is keeping them from making moves.''

"The Cowboys don't have an cap space.''

To quote Elaine Benes of "Seinfield'' ...

"Fake, fake, fake, fake.''

Our "Lame-Duck Blow It Up'' theory from a year ago has largely come true. We said the Cowboys were setting themselves up to have ample cap room to do business this offseason.

Now, we can debate as to whether they have been aggressive enough, or even "selectively aggressive'' enough, as they largely sat out the first few days of the NFL free agency window ...

Except for stepping out to sign 10 of their own guys, with big deals for Osa Odighizuwa and KaVontae Turpin qualifying as assertive moves.

And now, two weeks in, with much of the dust settled?

The Cowboys flipped the switches on the contracts of Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb, as we predicted they would, moving to the point where they had roughly a little over $70 million in cap space to work with.

Then they did Osa and a bunch of others, in a couple of instances via trade, and now the new Cowboys list includes a host of cost-effective free agents Javonte Williams, Miles Sanders, Dante Fowler Jr., Parris Campbell, Robert Jones, Soloman Thomas, Payton Turner, Kenneth Murray and Jack Sanborn.

Has the foundation here been rebuilt? That can be debated, especially as most Cowboys observers believe there is  still a massive need for a No. 2 receiver ... with names like Keenan Allen and Stefon Diggs being broached.

But amid the debating, some facts.

After all of this movent, as things stand right now, per Over The Cap, the Cowboys still have $38,505,804 in cap space.

How much is that, relative to the rest of the NFL? 

It's a top-10 number - ninth-best in the NFL, to be precise.

Shocking, right?

And get this: We can add roughly $10 to $13 million to that total with a Micah Parsons extension.

What will Dallas do with the space? Do they need to call Diggs or Allen, and Asante Samuel Jr and Calais Campbell and Will Hernandez? Will they be better than last year?

Will they be better in 2025 than the Super Bowl champion Eagles or the upstart Commanders?

Those answers, we do not have.

But the answers to questions about what can be done? "Cap Hell'' be damned, we have 39,673,304 of those.