The NFL’s legal tampering period — the moment teams can officially unofficially leak their big free agent signings for the 2024 season, begins at noon E.T. March 11. That gives all 32 franchises roughly a month after Super Bowl 58 to get their priorities in order and shuffle around their payroll in order to carve out plenty of spending room under this season’s yet-to-be-announced (but almost certainly historically high) salary cap.
The early stages off the offseason aren’t just about addition. Every team in the league has a list of pending free agents who were instrumental to their success (or lack thereof) in 2023. Some teams will have to make decisions on whether to re-sign All-Pros and future Hall of Famers for massive sums. Others will have to address which role players will return and which will test their value on the open market.
There’s one veteran who stands out at the top of each team’s “might leave” list. Teams like the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have huge decisions to make. Others like the Green Bay Packers and Atlanta Falcons have the option to head into 2024 with their cores mostly intact.
Let’s take a look at the biggest free agent decision each team has to make. And to help understand how vital each player is, let’s include their overall ranking from FTW’s top 102 free agents alongside each franchise’s estimated salary cap space. All cap space estimates come from the incredibly useful Over the Cap, but are working from a $242.5 million estimate rather than the $250 million-plus the cap could be, so teams may have more spending room than we expect.