With the season over I thought it might be a fun look to see what teams lost a good deal of their salary to various reserve lists this year relative to their total annual salary on the team. Reserve lists count for players on IR, PUP, NFI, SUS, etc…They do not count for players who were simply inactive. The amount of game weeks they were on reserve are used to calculate their adjusted reserve salary for the season. Here is the breakdown for 2025.
| Team | Players | Adjusted APY | Pct. Total APY |
| 49ers | 20 | $95,016,236 | 25.74% |
| Cardinals | 32 | $78,944,962 | 24.98% |
| Browns | 20 | $75,083,970 | 21.65% |
| Chargers | 18 | $52,063,160 | 19.23% |
| Dolphins | 25 | $59,984,889 | 19.04% |
| Jets | 26 | $38,964,804 | 16.95% |
| Bengals | 16 | $49,906,296 | 16.53% |
| Redskins | 19 | $44,257,849 | 13.32% |
| Titans | 18 | $30,334,795 | 12.58% |
| Colts | 21 | $40,968,534 | 12.47% |
| Saints | 21 | $27,601,959 | 12.30% |
| Bears | 16 | $38,915,045 | 11.84% |
| Panthers | 16 | $32,683,764 | 11.58% |
| Raiders | 10 | $26,135,401 | 11.41% |
| Texans | 22 | $36,034,283 | 11.23% |
| Bills | 18 | $40,609,559 | 11.15% |
| Ravens | 14 | $34,767,656 | 10.78% |
| Lions | 27 | $42,366,781 | 10.43% |
| Falcons | 20 | $31,742,953 | 10.24% |
| Buccaneers | 13 | $30,336,276 | 10.15% |
| Giants | 28 | $29,788,778 | 9.84% |
| Packers | 21 | $30,423,279 | 8.57% |
| Steelers | 20 | $26,692,267 | 8.42% |
| Cowboys | 24 | $30,590,176 | 8.41% |
| Patriots | 17 | $24,249,363 | 8.33% |
| Chiefs | 23 | $28,065,696 | 8.32% |
| Vikings | 18 | $28,363,942 | 8.10% |
| Broncos | 16 | $25,910,820 | 7.31% |
| Seahawks | 17 | $13,655,698 | 5.76% |
| Rams | 7 | $13,888,626 | 5.65% |
| Jaguars | 9 | $15,134,167 | 4.81% |
| Eagles | 15 | $11,283,503 | 3.25% |
The 49ers and Chargers really defied the odds managing their roster while dealing with injuries to some star players during the course of the season. On the other end of the spectrum teams like the Giants and Cowboys struggled despite being relatively healthy. Here is how things look across the NFL for wins vs salary lost.
Teams in the top left are all good teams who were basically healthy while the top right are the two teams that were hit hard by injury yet still did well. The bottom left are teams that probably underperformed relative to injury while the ones on the bottom right were banged up and played as if they were banged up.