Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
NFL free agency will drastically help reshape the fantasy football landscape as the new league year begins.
Now that NFL free agency is upon us, we’ll run through the fantasy football outlooks for trades, re-signings, midrange deals, and tag recipients.
This analysis will be updated as players continue to move about in free agency, so be sure to check back regularly.
The 2024 NFL salary cap has been set at $255.4 million per club, so let’s look at how every team stands in terms of cap space for the 2024 league year.
NFL teams must deal with all kinds of deadlines, and there’s no more important deadline than the one which signifies the new league year. In 2024, that hits on Wednesday, March 13 at 4:00 p.m. EST. When that happens, all NFL teams must be at or under the new salary cap.
On Friday, the NFL made this statement:
The NFL announced today that the 2024 Salary Cap will be $255.4 million per club, with an additional $74 million per club payment for player benefits, which includes Performance Based Pay and benefits for retired players. Total 2024 player costs will be $329.4 million per club, or more than $10.5 billion league-wide.
The unprecedented $30 million increase per club in this year’s Salary Cap is the result of the full repayment of all amounts advanced by the clubs and deferred by the players during the Covid pandemic as well as an extraordinary increase in media revenue for the 2024 season.
This will give some teams the freedom to start stacking their boards with potential free agents, as the money is flowing. For other teams, it will be a case of despondent window-shopping as they just scramble to get under that cap number.
Per OverTheCap.com, here is how every NFL teams stands in terms of salary cap space now. Here, we are using Effective Cap Space, which is a team’s salary cap number after signing at least 51 players and its rookie class. Our list goes from the most to the least cap space available; totals in parentheses represent negative amounts.
A snapshot positional fantasy ranking of notable impending free agents.
The NFL’s annual trek into free agency gives teams a chance to retool and rebuild. Franchise leadership needs to balance single-year needs with stop-gap options, long-term mega-signings, and take consideration of future NFL draft additions, all while managing to fit the contracts under the salary cap.
Below is a ranking of noteworthy players contractually eligible for free agency, ranked in order of likely 2024 fantasy football importance. Several players will hit the market after eventually being released, such as Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. We will address those specific situations in future articles.
