A team’s salary cap is an everchanging resource and this time of year, when teams are forced to make roster moves, there is a lot of fluctuation.
Over the past 10 days, the Detroit Lions have seen their roster reduced by 10 players. John Atkins, Geronimo Allison, and Russell Bodine all opted out of the 2020 season. Another five — Travis Fulgham, Chris Lacy, Joshua Garnett, Christian Sam, and Jonathan Wynn were released. Michael Jackson was traded to the New England Patriots. And undrafted rookie safety Jalen Elliott remains on the reserve/COVID-19 list.
This puts the Lions roster at 80 players, ahead of the August 16th deadline, and allows the team to shift from a split-squad to having the full team in the building at the same time. But increased options in the team facility are only part of the advantages the Lions got by making these moves, they also freed up a little bit of cap space.
Let’s take a deeper look at each of the salaries leaving the Lions salary cap, identify which one will impact the 2020 cap, and how much space the Lions gained.
Here are the terms you need to know:
Scheduled salary: The amount a player will earn if they are on the active roster the entire season and they hit their bonus markers
Top-51 contract: Only the highest 51 scheduled salaries count towards the salary cap, any contracts beyond that are not included
Prorated Bonus: Part of the scheduled salary that is guaranteed due to a bonus — i.e. signing bonus, roster bonus, etc. — with an exception for players who have opted out of 2020. Opt-out player’s prorated bonuses are waived from the 2020 salary cap but are still paid by the team.
Cap Hit: How much of the scheduled salary and/or bonus is applied to the salary cap. Note that guaranteed money counts against the cap even if the player is cut/traded
Cap Savings: How much space the team gains once a top-51 player’s scheduled salary is removed from the salary cap
An important factor to keep in mind is that when a player is removed from the Top-51, while they typically save the team salary cap space, they are replaced by the next highest player’s contract, which will count against the salary cap.
With the above concepts in mind, here’s a look at how the Lions’ recent roster moves impacted their salary cap with the important items highlighted in yellow and the bottom line salary cap savings in green:
In the grand scheme of things, the Lions only gained $631,666 in cap relief after these transactions but the above process will be repeated over the next month.
Ahead of the regular season, the Lions roster will be reduced to 53-players on the active roster (with the top-51 counting against the salary cap) and they will add 16 to the practice squad, which will also count against the cap.
There will be a lot of moving parts as 80 goes down to 53 + 16, but the Lions will likely gain some more space in early September.