It’s hard to believe, but it was a week ago when the Dallas Cowboys began their descent on Oxnard, CA for their 2024 training camp. The front office, coaching and training staff and the majority of players arrived in town by Tuesday, July 23, ahead of the player-reporting deadline of Wednesday. It’s been an eventful seven days since, as the club has held four days of practice before taking Monday off, ready to settle into a more familiar flow in preparation for the regular season.
There’s been a ton of things happen that’s led to a couple tons of analysis and conjecture. Fans should take a breath and recap everything that’s transpired so far.
During the camp opening press conference, the majority of the time was spent talking about the contract situations of Lamb, Dak Prescott and Micah Parsons, to the point head coach Mike McCarthy was more a prop than an actual content resource. One thing stood out to fans who are heavily frustrated with the front office.
Stephen Jones, the man in charge of negotiating with the players, tried to sell the fans on the idea that the asking prices from the three stars would take up 70-75% of the Cowboys cap if the franchise were to give in to demands.
It was the time-honored tradition of ownership looking to cast players as greedy and there wasn’t a bit of truth to it. 70% of the $255.4 million cap comes out to $178.5 million.
Jordan Love just signed the biggest QB contract, and his cap hit is $20M. Justin Jefferson’s cap hit is $8M. Josh Allen’s cap hit is $11M. Even in the most expensive (cap-wise) year of their deals – which won’t happen until the cap is approaching $300M, together they amount to $160M.