There has been a lot of movement over the last four days of free agency. The Detroit Lions have signed new talent, swapped draft picks, traded away and for a player, and understanding where things like the salary cap stand can be a bit murky.
While official a few contracts are still being processed, there is enough information to estimate the Lions available salary cap room at this time.
Here’s the basic framework you need to know.
The NFL salary cap is set at $198.2 million and the Lions are rolling over an estimated $18 million, giving them $216.2 million to work with.
Dead money is the first hurdle teams need to clear. By releasing Damon Harrison and Rick Wagner, as well as trading away Quandre Diggs and Darius Slay — plus a handful of other smaller moves — the Lions dead money sits at approximately $20.4 million. This is the cost of business when you are overhauling a defense.
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After the dead money, the player’s 2020 cap hits are added in. Currently, the Lions are carrying 72 of the 90 players they are allowed to have at this time of year.
One minor complication here is, the final contract numbers for Desmond Trufant, Danny Shelton, and Jayron Kearse have not yet been released. So to accommodate that, I have made estimates — erroring on the high side — for each of their deals. When the numbers do come in, I anticipate they won’t likely be more than $1 million or so over my estimations.
At this stage, the Lions have roughly $32.2 million in salary-cap space.
While that number is the actual salary cap space, there are other factors teams take into consideration, like anticipated rookie money and keeping an in-season cushion for spending throughout the year.
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The Lions estimated rookie pool is estimated to cost just over $12.7 million, but because of the NFL’s top-51 rule, only about $11.1 million actually counts against this season’s cap at this time.
That brings the workable salary cap availability to about $22.1 million.
Different general managers allow varying levels of funds for in-season moves. Lions general manager Bob Quinn has kept between $7 and $17 million in previous seasons. For this exercise, I am allowing $10 million in cushion.
That leaves the Lions with just over $12.1 million in available salary.
$12.1 million may not seem like a lot but when you look at the numbers below and see how frontloaded contracts create more room — and keep in mind I am being conservative with a few numbers — there is room to sign more players in this free agency period.
Here’s a full breakdown of where the Lions sit as of the publishing of this article:
