ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter reported on Sunday that the Dallas Cowboys will be $31 million over the cap in 2014. That would be a league high mark, and Schefted cited one NFL exec calling the Cowboys’ cap situation a “train wreck.” The Cowboys, in a possible effort to avoid causing panic in their fan base, has downplayed the report.
“No surprises here,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen 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 Cowboys had to jump through hoops and restructure multiple contracts to get under the cap for the 2013 season. They’ve done it so often they’ve almost become experts at it.
“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.”