Last year brought an earlier resolution on the salary-cap front. The $224.8M figure emerged in late January, but it is not out of the ordinary for the process to take longer to produce a number. A slower run-up is transpiring this year.
In December, we heard teams were expecting the cap to check in around $240M. Teams’ internal projections at that point were going on a salary ceiling between $235M-$240M. It looks like clubs are now expecting that number to be a bit higher; a year-to-year increase of more than $20M may now be in play.
After indicating an expectation the 2024 cap would be north of $243M, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio added the number will likely veer closer to $250M. This would be approaching a historic one-year increase.
The previous record came between the 2021 and ’22 offseasons, and extraordinary circumstances drove that. After the COVID-19 pandemic led to the second-ever cap decrease, the 2022 number ($208.2M) came in $26M higher than the 2021 ceiling. Flirting with that type of increase under more normal circumstances would be an interesting development for the league.
The NFL and NFLPA negotiate the salary cap, and Florio adds the league may be attempting to enact a more gradual increase from the 2023 number. The March 2021 TV agreements, along with money coming in from gambling partnerships, will factor into this year’s salary cap. The YouTube TV seven-year “NFL Sunday Ticket” agreement, worth more than $2 billion, will impact future caps as well.
Once the 2024 salary ceiling emerges, matters like franchise-tag numbers and RFA tenders — along with fifth-year option prices for the 2021 first-rounders — will crystallize. The cap has only climbed by $20M-plus in a year once, and it has only jumped more than $15M twice (last year and in 2006, when a new CBA was ratified).
Illustrating the league’s growth, the 2024 cap is expected to reside more than $110M above where it stood in 2014. Here is how the salary cap has climbed over the past two CBAs:
- 2011: $120.4M
- 2012: $120.6M
- 2013: $123.6M
- 2014: $133M
- 2015: $143.3M
- 2016: $155.3M
- 2017: $167M
- 2018: $177.2M
- 2019: $188.2M
- 2020: $198.2M
- 2021: $182.5M
- 2022: $208.2M
- 2023: $224.8M
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