This week, the NFL announced that its salary cap will rise from $255.4 million to a figure between $277.5 million and $281.5 million for the 2025 league year. This is an increase of between 8.7% and 10.2%, both well above average for the 31 seasons since the cap was implemented.
The NFL is in great financial shape. Revenues are steady. Every television network in the country that has any interest in televising sports seems poised to open up its wallet and pay extraordinary amounts for various packages of games.
An audience of about 127.7 million watched Super Bowl LIX – the highest total the Nielsen Ratings have ever reported for anything. Regular season games usually top 15 million viewers.
This first chart shows how the salary cap has increased over the years, dating back to 1994, when it started at $34,608,000.
I’ve provided three different paths for cap increases through 2030. The red line has the cap increasing 7.1% each year – the average increase over the last 31 years. That would see the cap reach $393.8 million in 2030. The yellow line is the ideal scenario – starting with the high end of $281.5 million for 2025 (10.2% more than 2024). It increases 10.2% each year until it reaches $457.5 million in 2030. And the green line slows down a bit. It starts with $277.5 million in 2025 and increases 4.0% per year, reaching $337.6 million in 2030.
Of course, we could face a major economic downturn, as well. Looking back at the cap history, you can see the flat growth years following the “Great Recession” of 2008. And the effects of COVID on the 2021 cap, which dropped 7.9% from the previous year. It has more than made up that ground since, however.
The primary point of this chart is primarily to show the overall growth and extraordinary health we’ve seen in NFL finances. A secondary point, however, is to illustrate that, over the period from 2025 through 2030, teams will have about $2.00 billion each in cap room over six years under the red (average) scenario, $1.84 billion under the green scenario and $2.18 billion under the yellow scenario. That’s a range of $340 million per team, or $57 million per season.
The second chart shows the cost of what I call the “Minimums” Package under the Collective Bargaining Agreement each season since 1994. This is based on the average makeup of an NFL roster, considering NFL experience. It’s essentially the minimum cost of fielding a replacement NFL team. I’ve presented this information as a percentage of the NFL cap.
What this shows is that currently, teams spend a minimum of 24.1% of the cap on that minimums package. This is near the historic low for that package. And, under the CBA, it’s probably going to decrease quite a bit. In fact, under the yellow scenario, by 2030, when the current CBA expires, the minimums package will cost only 17.0% of the cap. Even under the green scenario, it will drop to 23.0%.
This doesn’t take into account the Rookie Cap implementation in the 2011 CBA, which not only lowered the minimums, but considerably brought down the cost of signing first-round rookies. You see the COVID blip around 2021, but that also coincides with a second major change with the 2020 agreement. The 7-to-9 year and the 10-year-plus salary categories merged, continuing a trend in which young player salary minimums increase at a far greater pace than that of older players. This was in response to teams releasing minimum-value veterans simply because it was cheaper to play youngsters. The ratio of the 10-year group minimum to rookie minimum was 3.36 in 2003. It slowly dropped, a little each year, to 1.52 in 2024 and it will be 1.39 in 2030.
In 2030, the minimum salary for a rookie who remains on an NFL roster the entire season will be $1,065,000. This is important because it shows just how life-changing it is for any player to have a place on a 53-man roster, no matter how crazy the amount of money coming into the league from various sources. No one wants to upset this apple cart.
The reason this chart is important is that it shows why elite players, particularly quarterbacks, are receiving an increasing percentage of the cap in new contracts. Finding a quarterback who can run a modern offense is difficult. There are fewer capable quarterbacks than there are teams in the NFL. And, with teams able to fill their rosters more cheaply than ever, the quarterbacks who can run an offense are worth more and more money.
As this chart from Over the Cap illustrates (https://overthecap.com/contract-history/quarterback), pay for the top half of starting quarterbacks keeps increasing as a percentage of the salary cap, no end in sight. When it’s relatively easy to get to 35-40 competent players (there’s cost control over players in their first four years in the league) and you’re using about a quarter of your cap to do it, you pay whatever you can to get the players who will make a difference.
Recently, teams started using what are called “void years” to get around the limitations of the salary cap. A void year simply extends the principle of assigning a percentage of bonus money to a team’s cap room in a future season. In the past, that was limited to the life of a contract. If you signed a player to a four-year deal with a $20 million bonus, the bonus would count $5 million against the cap in each of the next four seasons.
A void year further extends the concept. Teams can sign a player for eight years and embed roster bonuses throughout the contract instead of salary. Each season also includes a minimum salary to meet CBA rules. When those roster bonuses are triggered, they’re assigned as any bonus would be assigned to the rest of the contact. However, there’s also a clause that immediately renders the contract void. Eight years may exist in the contact, and each year, bonus money is assigned further and further into the future, but, perhaps, in year four, the contract ends and all that future bonus money (already in the player’s pocket) becomes dead cap.
To prevent that, players with these void years are expected to renegotiate so the cycle continues. If a team spreads out those contracts across several seasons, theoretically, they can carry tens of millions of dollars worth of players more than they could ordinarily under cap rules. This works, as long as the cap keeps increasing.
Eventually, of course, there’s so much built up money in those void years that it becomes impossible to sign anyone. No team has reached that point yet, but it will happen. If there was another COVID-type year when the cap dropped, it would definitely have more impact because of void years.
Some teams are starting to bank on at least the red scenario (7.1% average increases in the cap) continuing. That’s why the difference between the scenarios has become so important – again, there’s a $340 million per team range over the next six years between the green and yellow scenarios.
The third chart shows the current level of “dead” money each team is carrying as we enter the 2025 fiscal year. It combines normal dead money – old bonus money from players no longer on the team – with bonus money tied up in void years, which is money that will be dead money, barring renegotiation. This changes rapidly, as contracts are frequently renegotiated.
Two teams in particular have an unusual amount of future cap space that’s essentially unrecoverable, at least at some point in the future.
First is Philadelphia, which has moved $525 million into seasons not part of active contracts. Of that, only $29 million is 2025 dead money from players no longer with the team. This is the reason the 2024 Eagles featured so many well-paid starters, including Jalen Hurts, when other teams had to release veterans. Some of that money may not come off the books for five or six more years, but it eventually has to count under some cap. However, $10 million in 2024, with a $255.4 million cap, is not the same as $10 million in 2030, with a $393.8 million cap. And now they have Super Bowl rings to enjoy. The risk paid off.
Next up is Cleveland, which has $378 million in dead or void contracts. A lot of that is the Deshaun Watson trade. And making sure the Browns can handle that contract and still field a roster seems to have produced a cascading effect on the roster. More and more players are getting void years, just to keep the roster intact.
However, unlike the Eagles, Cleveland players probably won’t be as willing to renegotiate and continue moving those void years ahead in time, because the Watson trade backfired and the Browns may have the worst quarterback situation in the league. They were 3-14 this season, no improvement in sight. And now their best player, Myles Garrett, is demanding a trade. He would like a ring of his own, and Cleveland isn’t going to be competitive without a good quarterback. Of course, not only will Garrett refuse to renegotiate and push his own compensation into more void years, if they trade him, everything they’ve already pushed forward probably spills back into 2026.
Philadelphia may be able to ease out of cap hell if it’s handled well and players cooperate. Cleveland is probably in worse shape.
San Francisco, Jacksonville and the New York Jets seem firmly on the same road Philadelphia already traveled. The 49ers have $210 million in dead/void space and need to resign Brock Purdy to a modern pay-the-quarterback contract this off-season. Jacksonville and the Jets are adding void years quickly.
New Orleans is using void years to extract itself, slowly, from cap problems created in recent years (or perhaps bury itself in future cap problems). The Saints lead the league in 2025 dead money, at $48 million. They also have $141 million tied up in void years.
Some teams are using void years, in the distant future, only to give quarterbacks the money that quarterbacks need to make these days. Kansas City only has two players with void years. But one is Patrick Mahomes, and those void years add to $120 million in 2031 and 2032. Green Bay is doing the same with Jordan Love.
The average team carries $12.7 million in 2025 dead cap money and $76.3 million in void year contracts. But that’s heavily skewed by the three teams over $200 million (49ers, Browns and Eagles). Five teams don’t use void years at all (Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Chicago, New England and the New York Giants) and another eight teams are under $30 million total. The trend is on the increase, however. There are about three times as many total players with void years as there were in 2023.
Will this continue? Philadelphia’s success will inspire other owners. The NFLPA will encourage this behavior because GMs can no longer tell agents that they can’t afford expensive guaranteed contracts. The cap is becoming more and more meaningless… at least while it continues to grow.
When the CBA expires in 2030, it will be difficult to change a system that maximizes contracts for the top 10% of the league that makes a lot more than the minimum salary. And the minimum salary is high enough that there’s no perception that the system is broken. Owners may want reform, but it will be a hard sell for an NFLPA that doesn’t have any incentive to stop the void-year cycle.
The net result, since this trend will continue, is that the NFL has made itself a lot more vulnerable to the next major economic downturn and no one is in a position right now to do anything about it.