Cowboys owner Jerry Jones will be fighting the cap penalties imposed on his team before a mediator next month, but he said Wednesday that the penalties didn’t hinder his team in free agency.
The Cowboys had $5 million knocked off of this year’s cap as a result of their spending in 2010, but they were still able to land a number of free agents to bolster the roster. Cornerback Brandon Carr was the biggest name, but guard Nate Livings, guard Mackenzy Bernardeau, safety Brodney Pool and quarterback Kyle Orton all wound up in Dallas as well.
“Hats off really to Stephen [Jones, Jerry’s son and the team’s director of player personnel], we have really been able to manage, and I can say we have not missed anything that we wouldn’t have done relative to free agency, relative to that cap deduction that we had,” Jerry Jones said, via the Associated Press. “Consequently, we’re halfway through the problem now with this draft, then we go into next year and we’ve got a full year to plan on it.”
While the penalties were an unforeseen problem for the Cowboys, their ability to work around it is the latest example of how talk of cap crunches can get overblown at the start of the offseason. Teams have plenty of mechanisms to provide themselves with enough relief to go out and get players, something the Cowboys did this year.
