NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made some interesting comments related to the salary cap and revenue calculations at his press conference at the owners’ meetings this past week. Mike Florio of PFT summarized those comments and here are the most pertinent quotes from Goodell.

“We did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on. The two areas that we spent time on were really the cap system itself, the integrity of that system, how’s it working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining, when that does happen. That was a very lengthy discussion.”

“The second is just the rising cost, the cost of stadiums, the cost to facilities, the cost of operation, the cost of investment, and how dramatically that’s impacting the ownership view”

Let’s tackle the second part of the quote first as that seemingly deals directly with the revenue share in the CBA. The current CBA splits the revenues collected by the NFL close to a 51.5/48.5 split between owners and players. This split is pretty much the same as the NFL’s prior CBA which started with a 52/48 split before ending at the current number.

However, there were some other concessions made by the NFL in determining the splits. In the 2011 CBA, the NFL was also allowed to recapture certain stadium credits that could reduce the split to the players side as low as 46% by the end of the CBA. Under the current agreement the drop would only be 48%. While we have no real insight into how low things went in the prior CBA the fact that he mentions costs of stadiums makes me think that owners feel that they are not getting enough credit for the costs of building/renovating facilities.

In addition, the NFL also included a “media kicker” to increase the amount that would go to the player side based on negotiations for new TV contracts which included a 17^th regular season game. From the owner’s perspective this is probably outdated as it was simply put in the CBA to get the players to agree to the 2020 CBA where the number of games was increased from 16 to 17. At this point 17 games is baked into the league and most of the players in the league have only known a 17 game season. While you would want to include something similar for an 18 game season the NFL probably has no desire to include it for more than the beginning duration of the CBA.

When it comes to negotiating a new formula for the owner/player split, now would probably be the time to start at least opening the lines of communication. The NFL Players Association has undergone a major change in leadership which means there is probably potential to revise the way things have been done.

When you look back historically at the NFL’s dealings with the union when it comes to  collective bargaining there was always a give and take. In the early years the CBA terms were not very long and usually the first year of a new CBA would see a massive spike in player costs before levelling off significantly. The most important thing for the league, however, is that they had labor peace and did not miss any regular season games during any negotiations.

The NFL’s 2006 agreement was clearly the CBA that the NFL regretted the most. Im not sure how many teams realized how much the salary cap would jump that year when they agreed to it but the salary cap jumped overnight by 19.8%, the 2^nd largest jump in the history of the NFL salary cap. Teams scrambled to comply as it seemed very unexpected when it hit. The owners had some idea that they were signing a bad contract as they also negotiated an opt out clause which they would invoke just a few years later.

What followed that CBA was the deal the NFL liked the most- the 2011 CBA. The 2011 CBA was a massive step back for spending as the cap limit itself fell by 2% from 2009 to 2011. The formulas for calculating spending were rewritten to allow for certainty in projections. In addition, the NFL flagged one of the major drivers of contract growth to be massive rookie contracts and implemented a hard cap on those rookie contracts to help curb growth. The NFL also got the players to agree to a 10 year agreement to ensure labor peace- something unheard of in sports. This was also all done with a new leadership group in charge of the players side.

The plan certainly worked as the salary cap was extremely predictable from 2011 to 2019. During that time the salary cap rose by 56.4%. By comparison, from 2001 to 2009 the salary cap rose by 82.5%.

The salary cap and owners were certainly impacted by COVID a few years ago which saw most stadiums remain empty resulting in a major loss of revenues. That has made the salary cap growth harder to really project since it was only this year that the NFL and NFLPA began to exhaust various salary cap deferrals related to COVID. However, growth rates between 2020, where the initial cap was not impacted by COVID, and 2025 average out to about 8% per year. Since 2017 the growth is at about 67% which is worse for the owners than the prior CBA though not as bad as the earlier CBA’s. I think when we look at those numbers we can see why the owners are thinking a clawback in revenue accounting should happen.

Now going back to his comments about the salary cap itself, I think we have a number of things that are in play but the primary focus is probably what is considered the high usage of void years in contracts which are used to defer salary cap costs and turn the salary cap into less of a deterrent than perhaps it was meant to be.

While void years have existed forever, the current use level of those is absurdly high relative to the past. Here are the estimates for the use of void years since 2013

The initial use of void years during the 2011 CBA was pretty low. In part that was because teams actually tried different strategies with their contracts, dramatically lowering prorated money and trying to work on a cap equals cash basis before realizing that was too inflexible of a strategy. Still during the time the NFL geared up for the 2020 CBA negotiations, the void year use was still low. In 2018 not even half of the NFL had at least one contract with a void year. The number grew in 2019 as teams prepared for potential salary cap changes if the CBA was not extended in 2020, but it was still relatively low relative to the salary cap.

Things dramatically changed in 2021 due to Covid. 30 teams now had a contract with at least one void year and the average league cost was nearly 20% of the cap that year. In the last three year, long after the real impact of the Covid year we are around 25%.

While it is fair to say that everyone uses them and it should be a level playing field, that does not mean that everyone wants to use them. This goes back to the concept of how the NFL is a reactive league and not a proactive one. When we look back at rules that were implemented in the CBA it was usually in retaliation against something one or two teams were doing. Sure everyone could do it but none wanted to be bothered with it.

Back in the 90s Dallas used a contract structure for Deion Sanders that was more or less the model for the current void year type of contracts. Dallas paid Sanders close to the minimum in salaries and instead prorated all his money and then deferred other costs to after the expiration of the CBA. The NFL eventually made a rule that prevented this (it’s actually referred to as the Deion rule in the CBA) by forcing prorated money to drop from non-CBA years back to the CBA contract years. Considering CBA’s were so short it would have prevented many of the current void year style contracts from being used the way they are.

That’s just one example but there are many others- rookie wage scales, proration being limited to 5 years, auto carryover rules, what does and does not count as a signing bonus, comp pick salary calculation modifications, poison pill clauses, etc…

While the NFL will often talk about competitive balance I am not sure that the void year really changes that (plenty of teams that overuse the void years stink) but owners are almost always thinking about costs and the use of the void years arguably drives contract prices up.

While the NFL salary cap has always been capable of being manipulated it did present a block at times for constantly re-signing all of your best players. In part it was because those players knew they could receive more on the open market than from their current team especially since many teams did not have the flexibility within their salary cap to make an offer. That was an era where you saw some higher end free agents actually switch teams and most positions across the leagues have more of a stable market structure. Now you get teams with owners who are willing to spend, dominate the salary scale and give other teams new salary marks they have to deal with.

For example the Bengals likely never would have had a market close to $29M a year to consider with Tee Higgins if the Eagles, Dolphins, and 49ers do not do the Devonta Smith, Jaylen Waddle, and Brandon Aiyuk contracts which were filled with voids on teams with significant deferred cap dollars.

Player spending in the NFL is way up from the 2011 CBA. While some years that was expected (Covid reducing the cap in 2021 in particular) there was never a similar clawback that would delay the growth of salaries in the NFL.

Here is what spending has been as a percentage of the cap since 2013:

In the early days of the 2011 CBA cash and cap spending were basically identical on average through 2017. We saw a slight uptick in 2018, 2019, and 2020 which was when void years were starting to increase. Owners got no relief during Covid and now that the cap has settled they were at nearly 108% spending last year. Spending is down in 2025 though it is too early to commit to a number since the summer is usually full of extensions. Still it should be significantly higher than the pre 2020 numbers which is what the NFL would prefer.

On a positional basis the league has clearly “lost” with some positions. Here is how much the top 10 salaries have changed between 2015 and 2025

A number of positions have really outpaced the cap and while it should, in theory, be harder to fit in many of those same players within the cap, teams are certainly not having that issue right now. In a league looking for steady state movement they would rather see these things tied more to the cap than they currently seem to be.

I think when you look at loopholes in the cap there are also other things besides the void years that some may think are not in the spirit of the cap. The modification of contracts to allow for a post June 1 designation is something I could see the league considering removing. There are a few teams that have done this, with the Eagles being the first I can recall, and they have gotten around the NFL’s original rule prohibiting the renegotiation after the end of the regular season by reworking a deal the last week of the year. In general the June 1 designations could be a discussion point.

Massive bogus void year salaries have allowed teams to get around rules surrounding renegotiations while also escaping certain salary cap treatments. Certain teams are tanking or finding ways to carry over massive amounts of cap room to increase the ability to spend the following year. Per game bonuses hidden as NLTBE incentives. Even insurance premiums could be a point of discussion.

I think it is clear that as the NFL approaches their next CBA they have already identified areas that they may want to discuss tweaking to try to bring things back to how the NFL functioned and spent from 2011 to 2018. Some teams would certainly be strongly against these changes but many I think would support changing things if it means finding ways to reduce player compensation and bring costs down more in line to what the NFL owners felt was fair about a decade ago.