Salary cap is expected to increase by more than $15 million per team in 2024

[Arkansas Bengal]

• By
• Mike Florio

  

Published December 10, 2023 06:31 AM

 

Multiple Sunday Splash! reports relate to the salary cap for 2024. However, the two main reports take very different approaches to the issue.

 

The version from ESPN.com focuses on the news that the owners won’t get a specific projection during their annual December meeting. Usually, they do. In the past, the NFL Players Association has complained that the projection is too low, prompting teams to set tighter budgets based on bad information.

 

The salary cap is always a product of negotiations by the NFL and NFLPA. Due to “open matters” that the parties are trying to resolve (via ESPN.com), the cap projection has not been finalized.

 

The NFL.com version of the story downplays the absence of a specific projection, opting instead to report that the cap is expected to exceed $240 million. That’s an increase of more than $15 million per team above the current maximum of $224.8 million.

 

Regardless, there’s no final number yet. That final number will be determined by the league and the union. And while the report from the league-owned website attributes a desire to “smooth out” cap growth to the union, the NFLPA should always want the cap to go up as much as possible, as soon as possible.

 

(The NFL.com article says that the union wants to avoid “a one-year spike” in the cap “so that one class of free-agent players doesn’t disproportionately benefit or suffer.” That’s only part of the story. The higher the cap, the less likely it becomes that veterans with non-guaranteed contracts will be squeezed to take less.)

 

If anything, it’s the owners who would want to delay cap growth to future years. Not all owners. Some (like Jerry Jones) would like the salary cap to be as high as possible as soon as possible, so that he can try to buy a Super Bowl win. Others prefer the cap to grow more slowly, primarily because the cap determines the minimum spending obligation.

 

Don’t be surprised if that’s the true heart of the delay. With pandemic-related losses in the rear-view mirror and new TV deals up and running, the cap is poised to mushroom.

 

“Business is booming, and everyone is finally out of the COVID debt,” the NFL.com item attributes to an unnamed source. That booming business directly results in a bigger burden to share cash with the players. The higher the cap, the more the league is required to give to the players. The lower the cap, the lesser the number.

 

So, yeah, if there’s any type of back-and-forth happening between the NFL and the NFLPA about how much the cap is going to go up in 2024, it’s the owners not the players who would be more likely to be trying to hold it down.

 

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/salary-cap-is-expected-to-increase-by-more-than-15-million-per-team-in-2024