Stephen Jones has already started setting expectations for 2025, and it may be a repeat of 2024 in terms of player acquisition.
“I think we knew we were going to have a challenge this year and next year,” Jones said of the team’s ability to spend on players.
“It’s going to be really, really tight because we still have some money left over from some guys who aren’t here today. And you’re going to have some other guys that won’t be here in the future that you still have their cap count.”
Fans lamenting Derrick Henry and Saquon Barkley running wild in Baltimore and Philadelphia, respectfully, rather than heading to Dallas in free agency last offseason may need to expect more of the same.
Dallas’ big spending before the start of the 2024 season instead came in the form of long-term extensions for Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb.
The Cowboys currently rank 24th in the NFL when it comes to salary cap space in 2025 with just north of $20 million, per spotrac.
Regardless of Stephen Jones’ fairy tales about the cap, spending on coaches is not limited by the cap, and part of Barnwell’s plan to fix the Cowboys revolves around exactly that.
Move on from Mike McCarthy.
The former Packers coach won 12 games in each of the three seasons he had a healthy Prescott, but his teams struggled in 2020 and 2024 even before Prescott went down with season-ending injuries. McCarthy modernized his offense when he was hired, but some of his changes were fleeting; the Cowboys are back down to 29th in motion rate at the snap this season, as an example.
He sold himself to the Cowboys as an analytics-reformed thinker, but that didn’t happen in practice based on the comments he made to announcers about wanting to hit carry totals in the second half and his late-game management. He was better than he was at his worst in Green Bay, but the bar is a lot higher in Dallas. He isn’t a bad coach, but he’s not making the team drastically better in 2025. There is someone out there who can do that.
Offer Ben Johnson five years and $125 million to take over as coach.
I wanted to argue that the Cowboys should hire Bill Belichick, who would have taken over in the hopes of immediately fixing the defense and left the offense to someone else. With Belichick taking the job at the University of North Carolina, though, Dallas might instead need to take a bigger swing to fix its offense.
Johnson’s work as the offensive coordinator in Detroit has been impeccable. While he won’t be able to bring that dominant O-line and some of the playmakers with him, consider how many of the people who touch the ball there were regarded before they got to Johnson. Amon-Ra St. Brown was a fourth-round pick. David Montgomery was a running back who had averaged under 4.0 yards per carry in his four seasons with Chicago. Wideouts Josh Reynolds and Kalif Raymond were cut by Tennessee. And Jared Goff, now an MVP candidate, had essentially been benched for John Wolford in a playoff game and was salary ballast in the Matthew Stafford trade. They’ve all gotten better under Johnson.
The Cowboys can’t subvert the salary cap, and they can’t buy first-round picks, but spending on coaches is uncapped. Paying Johnson this much would represent a significant investment and probably make every other team in the league angry, but coaches as a whole are underpaid. This franchise is valued as being worth more than $10 billion by Forbes. If this move succeeds, Johnson would be a bargain. If it fails, the Cowboys won’t miss the money.
