
Record salary cap for 2024 season
The NFL has revealed that the league’s 2024 salary cap figure will be a record $255.4m per club, higher than most experts predicted just a couple of weeks ago.
What amounts to an unprecedented $30m increase per club is the result of the full repayment of all amounts advanced by the clubs and deferred by the players during the Covid pandemic, as well as an extraordinary increase in media revenue for the 2024 season. The 13.6% increase is only bettered by the 14% jump that followed the Covid-induced drop in cap in 2021. The cap figure is supplemented by an additional $74m per club to be used for player benefits, including performance-based pay and support for retired players. As such, the total 2024 player costs will be $329.4m per club — or more than $10.5bn league-wide.
The higher-than-expected cap could result in more teams indulging in the upcoming free agency ‘frenzy’, prepared to invest more in bringing big name players to their roster ahead of the 2024 campaign. Although some potential cap casualties could also wind up being re-signed by their current teams, there are several intriguing names poised to hit the open market, and franchises already awash with cap space — such as the Patriots, Commanders, Bears, Titans and Colts, who all have in excess of $70m to spare — could be major players as they look to turn their fortunes around.
At the other end of the scale, seven teams — the 49ers, Cowboys, Broncos, Saints, Chargers, Dolphins and Bills — still find themselves in negative cap space, but may have had some tricky decisions eased by the increased budget afforded them by the NFL announcement.
It is worth noting, meanwhile, that the cost of using the franchise tag will have risen hand-in-hand with the increased cap figure because the number in question is devised by taking the sum of the average of the top five positional salaries over the preceding five seasons, dividing by the sum of the cap number for those same five seasons and multiplying that percentage figure by the new cap. Fortunately for us fans, we don’t have to do the math!