As the NFL and NFLPA continue negotiations, one of the economic proposals on the table relates to the salary cap. While the 2020 salary cap would remain unchanged, it could definitely be affected next year.
In the NFL’s latest proposal, they’ve asked players to accept a $175 million salary cap in 2021, unless the financial drop-off isn’t as severe as expected. While the salary cap could be higher than that next season, $175 million is the floor at this point. By comparison, the salary cap in 2020 is $198.2 million, which would be a significant cut.
While it has to be agreed upon, how would a $175 million salary cap affect the Bears?
It wouldn’t be pretty, but it also could be worse than other teams around the league, including NFC North foes the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings. According to Over The Cap, the Bears would have roughly $10 million in cap space in 2021.
Although OTC is quick to point out that their estimates don’t include “the cap charges for unsigned rookies and don’t adjust the carryover numbers for the change from the top 51 to to the regular season accounting numbers.” So that would make that number even less.
The average salary cap room next year would be around $15 million, says OTC, which is a far cry from the $30-$40 million average cap room over the last few years.
Here’s what OTC’s Jason Fitzgerald had to say about the potential effect on a group of veterans.
If they agree to this I would expect a number of mid level veterans to feel the brunt of this during this summer and next winter. Rookies, especially 1st round picks, may see their extension talks get pushed for a year. The other way teams will deal with this is likely to push money into the future via restructures with their secured veteran players who have high base salaries and use those 2022 and 2023 years as ways to “buy on credit” in 2021. Free agency would also be interesting as players and teams could opt for cheaper short term deals to bide time until the money gets higher in the future.
Bears general manager Ryan Pace has always been good at making cap room with restructured contracts, but it would be interesting to see how this pans out with a salary cap roughly $23 million less in 2021.
OTC says that a smaller group of veteran players will most likely take the brunt of this potential cap hit. Superstars and rookies are cut-proof and minimum salary vets can’t make any less, it leaves about 10-15% of veterans that will likely feel the ramifications if this comes to pass.
Then again, if there aren’t any significant revenue losses this season, this won’t be as big of an issue.
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