Salary cap most likely won’t hit $185 million

Luke

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yes, another update on the salary cap but this time with a league source who has knowledge of the situation.
This would put the Bears currently about 5mil over the cap.
Tagging starts tomorrow and we should see the cuts and restructures/extensions/converting salary to signing bonus in the upcoming weeks.
Will a QB trade occur before Mar 17th or do they just wait and sign a FA.


Posted by Mike Florio on February 21, 2021, 6:18 PM EST


When the NFL and NFL Players Association agreed recently to increase the minimum salary cap from $175 million to $180 million, the adjustment sparked speculation that the final number would be higher than the previously-expected limit of $180 million. Per a league source with knowledge of the situation, it’s possible that the number will be more than $180 million — but the number most likely won’t reach $185 million.

The final number for the salary cap, per the source, could land in the range of $182 million to $183 million.

The adjustment from $175 million resulted from aggressive lobbying by teams that would have had a hard time getting their 2021 cap number down to $175 million. Although plenty of teams will be doing plenty of work to clear plenty of cap space even if it lands in the range of $182 million, the source said that a $175 million cap would have sparked much more activity — and would have flooded the market with veteran players released by teams desperate to comply.

The teams that would have benefited from the chaos resulting from a $175 million cap aren’t thrilled by the fact that it will be higher. Most of those teams anticipated the financial losses early in the pandemic and planned accordingly for the impact on the 2021 cap. They believe that the teams that failed to properly plan shouldn’t be given an escape hatch.

They’re instead getting partial relief, as the losses from 2020 are spread over multiple years. Per the source, the TV deals (if they’re finalized) won’t change much. Neither will full attendance at the 2021 games, because the 2021 cap calculations already will be based on the assumption that stadiums will be at 75-percent capacity for the season. If the number lands in the range of 90 or 95 percent, it won’t push much more money into 2021.
 

ThatGuyRyan

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oH bUt ThE bEaRs ArE fInE tHe CaP wIlL bE $500M
 

PickSix

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Pace is so effed. That puts him about $4 mill over before having anything to sign the draft class and having anything for in season moves.

And a whole bunch of terrible contracts limiting his options.

Seems to me getting anything done with AR is a pipe dream.
I’m assuming Hicks, Massie, and Graham will be gone. Skrine maybe as well but that only get another couple mill.

With that he’ll have the draft and around $10 mill to spend in FA. That’s not much with having glaring needs at QB, WR, DL, RT. Need upgrades at backups everywhere especially ILB and TE.

Don’t see how he can do anything with Quinn, Leno or Jackson.
Fuller is a tough one. Hopefully they can get an extension/reduction to save some more this year, but he may not be interested and the Bears would be wise to not over extended at his age. $20 mill cap is hard to imagine, but so is $9 mill dead cap. Terrible contract structure by Pace.
 

Gustavus Adolphus

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Coming off 2020, they really shouldn't be sticklers on the cap. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a cap, but the league should be able to work with teams. Make them pay a luxury tax, add money to the shared revenue, whatever.
 

dennehy

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Not a smart long term play by the owners if this is the case, although I'm sure there are legal and contractual issues.
 

Montucky

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Isn't the cap a collectively bargained for slice of overall revenue? I can't imagine there's many ways around it.

Anyways, if this is the actual number the Packers are totally fucked. They have basically no way out, they have to cut anything not nailed down and even that won't save them. They've cut Christian Kirksey and Rick Wagner already and are still like fifteen million over $180,000,000. What else are they going to do? Restructure Rodgers? I'm sure he's real keen to do them a bunch of favors after the Jordan Love saga. Even that doesn't get them under. They're going to have to cut players who were positive contributors last season and then replace them with a bunch of nobody's.
 

HearshotKDS

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There are much smarter ways to save the owners money in a 3-5 year period than slicing the cap - but if there are teams who actually planned for the dip and weren't just shitty teams with little talent to invest money in (looking at the top of the cap tracker this is most of them) then there is a good argument to be made about not ruining/interfering with the gamesmanship at play.

If the cap does come out at $182M I feel like that is another knock against the Quinn signing as that contract then almost certainly removed the teams ability to retain AR and will likely cost 1 or 2 good defensive players as well in cap casualties.
 

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Coming off 2020, they really shouldn't be sticklers on the cap. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a cap, but the league should be able to work with teams. Make them pay a luxury tax, add money to the shared revenue, whatever.
But it was stated from the beginning of the pandemic that this would happen. It's all how you planned for it.
 

nc0gnet0

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it will hit 185 mil, just as soon as they move to 17 games. Owners are playing their hand very well, hell they might even go for 18 games and be able to sell it to the players union as a means to soften the reduced salary cap. If a 16 game schedule is worth 180 mil, then each additional game added should more or less be worth an additional 8-9 mil per team in cap space applied revenue.
 

rawdawg

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Pace is so effed. That puts him about $4 mill over before having anything to sign the draft class and having anything for in season moves.

And a whole bunch of terrible contracts limiting his options.

Seems to me getting anything done with AR is a pipe dream.
I’m assuming Hicks, Massie, and Graham will be gone. Skrine maybe as well but that only get another couple mill.

With that he’ll have the draft and around $10 mill to spend in FA. That’s not much with having glaring needs at QB, WR, DL, RT. Need upgrades at backups everywhere especially ILB and TE.

Don’t see how he can do anything with Quinn, Leno or Jackson.
Fuller is a tough one. Hopefully they can get an extension/reduction to save some more this year, but he may not be interested and the Bears would be wise to not over extended at his age. $20 mill cap is hard to imagine, but so is $9 mill dead cap. Terrible contract structure by Pace.

Eh. The only terrible contracts are Quinn and maybe Jackson, if he doesn't turn it around. Trevathan's deal is bad long-term, because they'll be paying him when he's long gone and/or way past his effectiveness, but his cap hit isn't bad right now. Hicks won't be gone. Skrine definitely will be as he had major concussion issues. Not even safe to keep him on the roster.

As for the Fuller contract, Pace didn't structure his contract. The Packers did because he was signed to a transition tag and the Bears matched the Packers offer. And this was actually a smart move by Pace. There's very few scenarios where Fuller would turn down a contract extension. He's guaranteed 9M. He wouldn't turn down being guaranteed more than 9M.

Cut Massie (June 1), Graham, and Skrine (June 1), extend Fuller, restructure Mack, and you have 38Mil in cap space. The Bears aren't in a unique situation. 10 teams will actually have worse cap situation than them. Over 1/2 the league has less than 15M in cap space.
 

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