NFL Finalizes 2026 Salary Cap, Bengals Primed With Space

 The NFL salary cap is taking another big leap from 2025 to 2026. Figures released from the league show the cap rising to $301.2 million for each team, a $22 million increase from last season and nearly a $100 million increase from the 2022 number.

Football is America's most popular sport, and that is reflected in the league's growth. Outside of the 2020-2021 pandemic stretch, there's been a major financial rise consistently this century. Cincinnati has the top seven cap space to work with this offseason, as Joe Burrow's contract gets more and more valuable by the year compared to this growth.

They have plenty of resources to jolt a dormant defense over the past few seasons and maximize these ever-growing resources. Add in top 10 picks across six of the seven draft rounds this April, and things could change quickly.

Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin discussed taking big swings in free agency at this week's NFL Combine.

"You can’t have a team full of highly paid guys," Tobin said. "The cap doesn’t support that. You have to have guys on rookie contracts proving snaps and roles for you and developing in their careers.  You can’t have a bunch of 20-million-dollar players at every position. The math doesn’t work. When you give up a young player that’s a four-year player, and a chance at finding Geno Atkins in the fourth round, just give up that fourth-round pick, and nobody cares. If you name Geno Atkins, everyone would care. It would have affected us pretty heavily. We try to maintain as many opportunities to find good young players as we can. There are definite needs on our football team. Those are the areas we’ll try to fill in with more proven veterans."

Check out the full year-by-year growth below as we sit less than two weeks from the start of free agency: