There wasn’t a lot of spare salary cap room to be found in the couch cushions for the Detroit Lions, but the team did manage to scrimp together just over $1 million in unused cap room to roll over into 2022. Per numbers from ESPN’s Field Yates, the Lions rolled forward $1.079 million in 2021 cap room to the 2022 season.
Every little bit helps, of course. The Lions didn’t have as much to carry over into 2022 due to a preponderance of dead cap room taken in 2021 on players no longer with the team during the season (Matthew Stafford, Jamie Collins, Justin Coleman among many more).
Rolling over unused cap room is one way for teams to afford to spend more in the next season, especially for teams like the Lions who didn’t spend heavily in free agency in 2021. The adjusted figure at Over The Cap now projects the Lions to have $33,219,269 in cap room available for the coming offseason.
NFL teams recently declared unused 2021 cap space rollover amounts (below).
After the playoffs, the NFL will audit incentives, bonuses, etc by team. That figure will be added/subtracted to the number below.
The sum + the 2022 Salary Cap = each team's 2022 adjusted cap number. pic.twitter.com/BMThnJyLpa
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 17, 2022