With the 2023 season finishing up, many of us are already looking toward 2024 and what our favorite teams salary cap position is. I put out a few posts on X the last two days looking at those numbers which always gets a wide range of responses about how the numbers are wrong, you aren’t counting player Xs release, and so on. So I thought I would look at maximum possible cap situations today.

One of the ways that a team can create cap room is by releasing players. So what I did here was look at the net savings (his cap hit minus dead money minus the $795K cost for a replacement player) for every player on the roster in 2024 and if it was more than $1 million considered the player a release candidate. Here is how much additional space every team could create by “gutting” the roster.

The teams at the top of this list have tremendous roster flexibility. They have players with bloated salary cap charges where the guarantees have more or less been paid out and the bonus prorations don’t really make that kind of dent in the decision making process. The Chargers and Steelers are way above any team in the NFL. For Pittsburgh this is typical since they rarely guarantee future salaries and only need to worry about prorated money. The Chargers pushed a ton of cap room into 2024 in hopes of competing in 2023. Clearly that did not work out but at least there are limited long term implications.

The Broncos, Jaguars, and Seahawks make out the rest of the top five. In large part this is due to their big deals signed two years ago having most of the guarantees run out (Seattle doesn’t do future guarantees at signing which also plays a role).  These teams will all have some options if they want to cut certain players.

The bottom of the chart are the teams with a fixed roster. The Rams did their housecleaning in 2023 and there isn’t much left for them within their contract structures in 2024. The Saints team is just filled with massive bonus prorations making it near impossible to cut anyone unless they modify the contract. The Cowboys, Texans and Bucs are a combination of newly signed players, heavy use of prior restructures and a lack of long term contracts to make releases useful.

The second way to create cap room is via restructures. This is where we take a players salary, drop it down to the minimum and convert the difference to a signing bonus. A bonus like that can be spread over five years by using void years. Since we are interested in max salary cap relief I took every players salary, dropped it to the minimum and assumed that we would add enough years so that the bonus can be prorated to five years. I also did the same with every player who had a roster bonus. If the total of those savings were more than $1 million I included them as a restructure candidate. Here are those numbers:

It is important to remember that all of the money saved in this scenario is reallocated over those additional four years. In some cases it might mean all is pushed to 2025, so each year in the future will be more difficult for the cap by taking this path.

The teams at the top of this list have contracts with large Paragraph 5 salaries and/or roster bonuses next year. The Saints lead the way with 20 players who can be restructured to create at least $1 million in savings. This is not a big number on a per player basis but will ne needed to get the team cap compliant. Miami comes in number two and given how they played this year one would expect this to be the path they go down. San Francisco is probably going to be a bit more cautious than Miami and New Orleans but will probably run down the restructure route as well. Buffalo is another team to keep an eye on.

The two interesting names here are the Broncos and Chargers. They have flexibility both with cuts and restructures and there is a lot of overlap in those two categories. Both are probably in an either restructure or cut scenario more than combining both methods.

The Eagles have the least flexibility in the NFL. This is because the team pre-restructures all their contracts via option bonuses.  So their initial cap numbers already reflect the ultimate savings. New England has a bunch of free agents and few meaningful contracts to create cap room with. The Titans are similar in that they are already turning their roster over. Houston and Washington are simply building and there are not that number of veteran contracts to work with.

So how can we use this information to come up with an overall cap estimate? What I did was bring every team up to 51 players and factored in each team’s estimated carryover to come up with the current projected cap room for 2024. I then added in what the cap would look like if they gutted the roster. I then did another column that factored in what the cap would look like if they went crazy with the restructures.

For each team that is already projected to be under the cap I simply averaged all three scenarios to come up with a composite cap situation. For teams over the cap I did an average of the cut/restructure scenarios. For those who only create a positive cap environment via restructures (Saints, Dolphins, and Cowboys I’m looking at you) I took 40% of their positive scenario. Here is what I came up with.

The top cap situations in the NFL look to belong to the Colts, Commanders, Patriots, Titans, Bears, and Bengals. They each have a great amount of roster flexibility whether they decide to stand firm with their rosters, cut players and/or restructure contracts. Basically, they can do whatever they want with extensions and free agent signings as long as it is within their cash budget.

The Saints are by far the least flexible team. Yes they will likely do the max restructure thing to get to $34M and will make a cut to get a shade higher and probably restructure another contract for June 1 cap relief, but what exactly does it accomplish as they struggle to be over 500.

The Bills cap situation has devolved over the last two seasons and they have some really hard decisions to make with this team. Pushing more money to be able to sign a free agent or two would be a mistake in my opinion. They need to get back on the more flexible side which probably means sacrificing a year of being active with signings and restructures.

Both Dallas and Miami look to be in difficult spots as well. Dallas’ numbers are very much tied to Dak Prescott and they probably need to work an extension out with him to help in the future. I would be stunned if Miami does not go all in again next year.

Finally, the Eagles round out the bottom five. Since they have already structured most of their contracts to maximize savings they have created a roster that every year is basically going to carry over from year to year with small releases and retirements along the way.