Each of the NFL teams has officially submitted to the NFL the amount of 2024 salary cap space that they will carry over to the 2025 season. At the top of the list is the 49ers who will carry over $50.097 million to 2025. The 49ers created this much cap room by design through restructures in 2024 that were almost solely done to aid the team’s potential salary cap crunch in 2025. The Browns were 2nd with $41.951 million and they led the NFL in restructured contracts in 2024 for the same reason as the 49ers.

At the low end of the numbers were the Jets who only had $345,919 to carry over to 2025. They used up some cap room at the last minute to prepay some incentives, but in general they went all in on the year and had little to show for it. Carolina was next with $490,368 as they are still dealing with the fallout from decisions made in the past. The average carryover was $11,584,981 and the median was $6,348,893.

We have been using estimates for the carryover for all of our cap figures for 2025 and those have now been updated to reflect the real numbers. We will be adding in some estimated adjustments in the coming weeks and then change those when the NFL makes the numbers official. Here is the amount of carryover for each team:

The New Orleans Saints have begun their annual cleaning of the salary cap by finalizing the expected restructure of OT Ryan Ramczyk’s contract to pave the way for Ramczyk to officially retire this summer. Ramczyk, who had an outstanding seven year run with the Saints, is one of the players who paved the way for right tackles to be paid closer to the level of left tackles when he signed his $19.2 million per year contract extension in June of 2021. At the time the only right tackles who were paid closer to the left tackle level were those who teams felt would be able to market themselves as a left tackle in free agency. Ramczyk spent all of 2024 on the PUP list and many expected that he would retire this year.

To help the Saints salary cap, Ramczyk agreed to eliminate his $18 million base salary for 2025 and reduce it to the minimum of $1.255 million. This frees up $16.745 million in cap room, allowing the Saints to carry him on the roster at a $12.33 million cap figure until June 2nd at which point he should likely retire. Prior to this the Saints would have had to carry his cap figure at a $29 million number if they wanted to use the June 1 cut.

Ramczyk’s contract still has $23.066 million in dead money and by using the June 1 release the Saints will be able to split that up across two seasons at $11.083 million in 2025 and $11.983 million in 2026. Overall this puts the Saints in about a $12 million better position with the salary cap than if they released him or allowed him to officially retire in March.

The Saints still have a ton of work to do for 2025. Following this restructure they are still approximately $50 million over the 2025 salary cap, $27 million worse off than the next closest team.

Tyreek Hill seemed to indicate that he is unhappy with the state of the Dolphins after the team failed to make the playoffs and he suffered his worst year since he was a rookie. Hill apparently made himself unavailable late in the loss against the Jets which could possibly void guarantee’s in his contract but let’s assume that does not happen and take a look at what it would really cost Miami to move Hill.

Miami signed Hill to new three year, $90 million contract in early August when Hill was unhappy that his contract had been surpassed by so many others in the league. The numbers, however, sound bigger then they really are. Miami was going to pay Hill $22.935 million in 2024 and the new deal gave him a raise of just $3.315 million this year. They did, however, guarantee $27.7 million for 2025 when his prior contract had no guarantees in 2025.

The structure of the contract was unusual for a star player extension and indicated that Miami’s front office understood that this could be more of a one and done scenario. While the guarantee is large for 2025, the salary itself is somewhat reasonable, ranking 5th among receivers in the NFL which makes it tradeable. Miami did not include a large roster bonus in 2025 as part of the deal and they lowered his salary cap charge through the use of an option bonus worth $15.85 million, but with a date that is basically tied to the start of the regular season. Normally such bonuses would be paid in March when used early in a contract. That option date gives Miami a long time to work out a trade for Hill while keeping him at a cap number under $28M and forcing all of his guarantee onto a trade partner. Hill has no injury protection for 2026.

Cutting Hill outright is not feasible for Miami unless he gives up his guaranteed salary. The cost to cut Hill would be $55.95 million on the salary cap if Hill was a straight release. They could opt for a post June 1 cut but the dead money next year would be either $40.4 million if they did not exercise the option or $27.7 million if they did. Exercising the option would reduce the ability for Miami to offset that guarantee when Hill signed elsewhere.

Trading Hill would be reasonable as the dead money is just $28.3 million, which is about his current cap number. If they waited until the summer to execute a trade the number would drop to only having to account for $15.9 million in 2025 and the rest of it in 2026. That might give the Dolphins whatever cap room they need to function for the 2025 year since they have a bad salary cap situation where they project to be around $11 million over the salary cap.

For all of the grief that Miami gets about their contract decisions and what they have done with their cap their last few years, this is one where Miami left themselves a lot of opportunity to get out of a contract if things went sideways. Now we will see if they take advantage of the situation they created for themselves.

With the regular season over more than half of the league is already looking ahead to the draft and free agency. Here is an updated look at where teams stand with the salary cap next year as well as how many UFA’s the team has next year. These salary cap numbers include estimated carryover from 2024 but do not include estimated adjustments or escalators which will reduce some teams cap room while increasing others. We will update those in the coming weeks. These numbers do include the minimum salary required to reach 51 players for each team which is why the numbers will look different than the salary cap page.

The NFL announced the official Pro Bowl rosters today and here is a look at how the teams stack up in terms of contract and salary cap charges:

The vast majority of players are currently on contract extensions with the 2^nd most players being those who are still on their rookie contracts.

As far as positional breakdowns here is the average salary breakdown per position

Finally the following players have earned incentives and escalators based on making the Pro Bowl:

I put together a video going over the various situations regarding the salary cap charges associated with keeping or cutting Aaron Rodgers on the Jets in 2025.