After being heavily criticized this offseason for being near the bottom of the NFL in cash spent on players, Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones had an announcement to make when he joined the K&C Masterpiece on 105.3 The Fan on Friday.
"I'm proud to tell you today, factually, we spent the most cash of any club in the National Football League this year on players. We're the No. 1 cash-spender on players," Jones said. The reason I'm saying it in that manner is because there was a critique going on a few weeks back that we weren't sending money on players, which is amusing and ridiculous.
"I really don't know that we have a good grasp of what the cap does. But there's no free lunch. None at all. Santa Claus does not put the tricycle on the Christmas tree here."
In a recent article from The Ringer, Jones came under fire for 'operating like a small-market team' despite being the most valuable sports franchise in the world at an evaluation of $10 billion.
According to a breakdown by Blogging the Boys earlier this year, the Cowboys ranked dead last in the NFL from 2016 to 2019 in cash spent on players and finished No. 30 from 2021 to 2023. And as of just over two weeks ago, Dallas was the lowest cash-spending team in the NFL in 2024. Of course, that all changed after the Cowboys signed CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott to massive extensions.
While Jones said it was 'amusing and ridiculous' to point out that his team has been near the bottom in cash spent on players for quite some time, he said "it did not" bother him to see those reports published and made a point to say that all teams end up spending all of the cash they're allotted to.
"What it does is allow me to specifically point out that every club does this, and that's part of the cap. We could have an all-cash cap but we decided years ago to create the ability to take some salary, make it a bonus, and spread that salary out over a lot of years. That's the ultimate maneuver that everyone uses. It's just money that you got to account for this year that you spent in years past to have a better team. Other than Kansas City, we've been the winningest team, I think over the last four years in the NFL. And we've done that spending money on the supporting cast that we got around our key players. Obviously, we want to keep doing that."
Cowboys EVP Stephen Jones had a similar message when speaking with the K&C Masterpiece earlier this offseason to defend his father's infamous "all-in" statement.
“Everybody has their own definition of what that means, but I’ve never not known us to be all in, nor have I known anyone we compete against not to be all in,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan. "We spend max, max money year in and year out. All 32 (teams) can only spend the same amount of money over a five-year stretch. When we’re all said and done, we max out our salary cap every year. We will have done that. What comes with having a good roster, which we do, we’re also looking towards signing our own guys.
"It doesn’t mean it happens overnight. But when you’re wanting to sign players like Dak (Prescott) and Micah (Parsons) and CeeDee (Lamb), then you have to hold money back if you want to have a realistic chance of signing those guys."