NFL salary cap figures- were not as good as I thought.

I thought us being 10 million under was pretty good until I saw how many teams were in better shape cap wise than we are. The Free agent market is gonna be a lot tougher than I first thought.

How Does Each Team Stand in Terms of the Salary Cap?

The Commish thought it might be interesting to see just how all 32 teams in the NFL stack up against the Salary Cap going into 2003. At this point, we do not know for sure what the cap will be for 2003. But with the latest deal with Direct-TV on the horizon, each team is expected to have a few million dollars more to play with than they had in 2002, when the cap was $71.7 M. For a decent ballpark figure, we will project the cap to be $75 M, which is just over $3 M over the 2002 number.

Note that many of the teams that are way under the cap for 2003 are not in as good of shape as you may think, as many of their players that are under contract for 2002 become Free Agents in 2003.

Teams highlighted in RED are teams that appear to be in dire straits and will have to make some drastic cuts to meet the cap. (With uncertainties about what the real cap figure will be for 2003, we define any team as having less than $3 M in 2003 cap space to fit this criteria.) Teams in BLACK are teams that look to be in pretty good shape in terms of the salary cap. These teams may not have much room to sign big time free agents, but they should at least have the space to sign most of their own free agents. (For the sake of simplicity, we define any team as having less than $10 M in 2003 cap space to fit this criteria.) Teams in GREEN are teams that will be well under the cap and should have plenty of room to be a factor in free agency.


Note: These numbers do NOT take into account performance based incentives that may kick in next year based on player performance this year, so the cap room for most (if not all) of these teams will actually be smaller after these incentives kick in.





Club Room Under Cap
Arizona Cardinals $ 41.1 M

Atlanta Falcons $ 9.7 M

Baltimore Ravens $ 30.6 M

Buffalo Bills $ 15.8 M

Carolina Panthers $ 10.5 M

Chicago Bears $ 9.6 M

Cincinnati Bengals $ 11.4 M

Cleveland Browns $ 8.1 M (Over)

Dallas Cowboys $ 11.1 M

Denver Broncos $ 17.5 M (Over)

Detroit Lions $ 9.1 M

Green Bay Packers $ 3.6 M

Houston Texans $ 20.6 M

Indianapolis Colts $ 1.3 M

Jacksonville Jaguars $ 14.9 M

Kansas City Chiefs $ 2.6 M

Miami Dolphins $ 5.3 M

Minnesota Vikings $ 32.3 M

New England Patriots $ 3.7 M (over)

New Orleans Saints $ 20.9 M

New York Giants $ 14.1 M

New York Jets $ 15.3 M

Oakland Raiders $ 45.6 M (Over)

Philadelphia Eagles $ 14.7 M

Pittsburgh Steelers $800,000 (Over)

St. Louis Rams $ 10.4 M

San Diego Chargers $ 2.0 M (Over)

San Francisco 49ers $ 4.2 M (Over)

Seattle Seahawks $ 23.1 M

Tampa Bay Buccaneers $ 4.5 M (over)

Tennessee Titans $ 9.3 M (over)

Washington Redskins $ 4.3 M

 

of the teams better off than the panthers, look at who they need to re-sign or replace:

arizona -- boston, jenkins, sanders and plummer
baltimore -- mcallister, blake and gash
bills -- price
bengals -- spikes
texans -- allen?
jags -- mack, mitchell and darius
vikings -- lacina? hall?
saints -- ??
giants -- hilliard, petitgout and stoutmire
jets -- anderson, coles, hall and morton
eagles -- kirkland, barber, detmer, mitchell and hauck
seahawks -- jackson, jones and simmons

the panthers have:

Bates, Michael WR UFA
Byrd, Isaac WR UFA
Fair, Terry CB UFA
Hoover, Brad RB RFA
Howard, Reggie CB RFA
Jackson, Brad LB UFA
Jacquet, Nate WR UFA
James, Jeno OL RFA
McDaniel, Emmanuel CB UFA
Navies, Hannibal LB UFA
Nesbit, Jamar OL UFA
Peete, Rodney QB UFA
Reyes, Tutan OL RFA
Sauerbrun, Todd P/K UFA
Smith, Fernando DE UFA
Towns, Lester LB RFA
Wiggins, Jermaine TE RFA

 

Keep in mind that that's $10 million before we start cutting dead weight (I.E. Sean Gilbert & that's a lot of weight) Than there's the guys who will probably get cut or restructured.

Walls - Cut
Steussie - On the fence
Gilbert - Cut
Muhammed - Restructure

Not sure of the exact #'s but that's a lot of salary right there.