Thirty years ago next week, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones grabbed the biggest star on the market. Big D only had $155,000 in salary cap space under the NFL’s relatively new rules in 1995, but Jones made a $35 million deal with cornerback Deion Sanders work by ponying up a $13 million signing bonus and converting quarterback Troy Aikman’s salary to a bonus. From a cap perspective, bonus money is spread across the lifetime of a contract, even if the money is forked over at once, allowing Jones to outspend his competition in part thanks to the Cowboys’ league-leading cash flow.
On Thursday, Jones will be on-hand at Dallas’ season opener to see his rival Philadelphia Eagles lift a championship banner—and thus watch what salary cap maneuvering has led to. As the NFL’s business has ballooned this century, with big-money owners buying in, teams are increasingly spending more than the annual salary cap number suggests they can. Only the Atlanta Falcons are set to spend less cash on players than their cap tally represents, according to Over the Cap’s math, while 26 teams have already agreed to deals that spread bonus money beyond the length of a player’s contract through what are called void years. And few teams have been as aggressive as the Eagles.
Running back Saquon Barkley will earn $16.5 million this year, but with most of that coming in the form of a bonus, his cap hit is only $6.7 million. In March, Philadelphia made linebacker Zack Baun the fourth highest-paid linebacker in terms of guaranteed money, with a $51 million deal. His cap hit in 2025? $4.4 million. According to Over the Cap, the Eagles have pushed up to $452 million of guaranteed money into void years coming after contract end dates, more than the next two teams combined.
Those deals, orchestrated by general manager Howie Roseman, are helping the Eagles retain their core players despite facing $80 million in so-called “dead cap”—money previously given to players who are no longer on the roster—led by $16.4 million for center-turned-media personality Jason Kelce. That dead cap number would’ve been shocking for league executives a few years ago, but a base salary cap that has grown from $198 million in 2020 to $279 million this year rewards teams willing to spend. Even after losing defensive lineman Milton Williams and linebacker Josh Sweat in free agency, the Eagles still managed to enter 2025 with a league-high seven of the NFL’s 100 highest paid players in terms of average annual contract value.
Dead cap, negative branding aside, is increasingly the price of doing smart business.
“Someone like myself that managed a cap for 10 years from 1999 to 2009, there was a much different feeling about dead cap,” said Andrew Brandt, a former Packers VP who is now the executive director of Villanova University’s Center for Sports Law. “In some ways, it’s never been easier to manage a cap.”
And yet, Brandt added, Roseman’s ability to do so stands out. Roseman got his start in Philadelphia as an unpaid summer intern advising the team on salary cap matters in 2000, rising to GM in 2010. In 2022, Roseman compared his cap strategy to buying a houses with low interest rates rather than paying cash upfront, looking for every extra available dollar he can get.
“Howie has been giving them a competitive advantage,” Brandt said. “He’s been able to use his background, which is more of a financial business background [rather than player evaluation], to the Eagles’ advantage.”
On the other hand, Jones, who serves as Cowboys owner, president and general manager, has taken a new round of criticism this week after failing to come to terms with Micah Parsons before trading him to Green Bay. (The Packers added the former Defensive Player of the Year on a four-year, $46.5 million-per-year contract on the eve of the season thanks to their own salary cap maneuvering; Parsons will account for less than $10 million of Green Bay’s 2025 cap.)
Parsons’ departure leaves the Cowboys with four of the top 100 highest paid players by average annual value—and four active players who were alive for the team’s last Super Bowl appearance in 1995. Dallas is middle-of-the-pack in terms of using void years.
Guaranteeing contracts and piling up dead cap is far from a recipe for success—the Jaguars and Saints are among the biggest carriers of dead cap this year as they reset their books under new coaches—but it now feels like table stakes for the league’s contenders. In 2016, NFL teams in aggregate spent the same amount of cash as they accounted for in cap costs. But in recent years, they’ve regularly spent 10% over that number, thanks to signing bonus and prorations, pushing cap responsibilities into the future.
That’s particularly fruitful as long as the cap continues to grow. Reports of the NFL potentially renegotiating its media deals before 2029 likely come as welcome news to GMs looking to spend more. However, commissioner Roger Goodell intimated this spring that the league could tighten its cap rules when the next collective bargaining agreement comes around in 2031. Until then, executives capable of bending cap tables to their teams’ needs will remain invaluable.
