Jan. 31, 2026, 10:40 a.m. CT
The NFL is completely in business-season mode now. With just one game remaining on the 2025 schedule — Super Bowl LX — the majority of the league is focused on the 2026 season. The final college football all-star games are almost over, setting the stage for February’s scouting combine and March’s start to free agency.
Teams need to know how much salary cap space they are playing with when free agency hits. While numbers have been bantied about, those have been projections from third-party resources. The league doesn’t send out info until this time of year and on Friday, announced the range the cap will fall into once the number is officially announced in early March.
Teams will have between $301.2 million to $305.7 million to play with. Taking the middle ground of $303.5 million, that projects the Dallas Cowboys around $31.4 million over the projected cap.
Dallas currently has 54 players under contract for the 2026 season, including players who have signed future deals since the end of last season. The part of the roster the NFL uses to calculate offseason cap compliance, the Cowboys’ Top 51 salaries, total $333.4 million, according to Over The Cap.
The team also is carrying $24.3 million of dead cap space from players who are no longer on the team’s roster, but who have been paid salary that hasn’t yet been accounted for on any prior year’s salary cap. This is done through NFL accounting where bonuses are paid, but the cap hit can be spread across future years’ caps.
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With that $357.7 million, the Cowboys would be $54.2 million over the projected cap. However Dallas has unused cap space from the 2025 season that will roll over into 2026. While incentives (earned and not earned) are still being calculated for all 32 teams, Dallas is expected to gain an additional $22.8 million through that action, again projected by Over The Cap, to bring their amount due to $31.4 million.
While the league threatens teams with removing players from rosters if the club isn’t cap compliant on the first day of the league year, the Cowboys have several mechanisms in place to create cap space. They have restructure triggers in every major contract which will allow them to move base salary into bonuses and use the accounting trick to create space.