While most of the sports landscape has been shut down by the coronavirus outbreak, the NFL has kept moving through its offseason. NFL players voted to ratify the league’s proposed new collective bargaining agreement, which was decided by just 60 votes.
Among the big changes with the new CBA include 17-game regular seasons, an expanded playoff field from 12 to 14 teams, higher minimum salaries, only one franchise or transition tag can be used and reduced penalties for positive drug tests with no suspensions.
Let’s take a look at how the new CBA will impact the Bears in 2020 and beyond.
1. Changes to the salary cap
The NFL’s salary cap was set at $198.2 million for the 2020 season, which is a 5.3% increase from the previous year, the smallest since 2013. Over the Cap has the Bears with roughly $11 million accounting for Roy Robertson-Harris’ contract but not Danny Trevathan’s extension. Kyle Long is still on the Bears’ books, and he’ll free up $8.1 million in cap space when his contract his removed.
Although, under this new CBA, it would allow more flexibility to “convert big base salaries into signing bonus; push off the cap hits into future years and create short term money now,” according to Tom Pelissero.
While the salary cap is just around $200 million this year, that number could increase significantly in 2021 due to the NFL set to make more money in the future with TV deals.