The NFL and NFL Players’ Association on Wednesday agreed on a salary cap of $ 182.5 million per team for 2021, a long-awaited decrease of 8% from last season, sources told Adam Schefter of ESPN.
The delivery will force teams to make tough roster decisions in the coming days and weeks.
The limit limits have increased every year since 2011 in conjunction with the rising league revenue, but a 92% drop during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a reduced revenue in 2020. The NFL and NFLPA agreed last summer that the cap would not be lower than $ 175 million; last month, they informed teams that it would amount to at least $ 180 million. That was $ 198.2 million in 2020.
As in previous years, the final number is the result of negotiations between the league and the union on expected revenue and other factors. A source told Dan Graziano, ESPN, that the league’s revenue for 2020 would be absent to a limit of about $ 160 million this season, if the projections were not negotiated.
Teams must meet the cap by next Wednesday at 16:00 ET, when the new league year begins. Planning has been going on for a year, but teams are expected to release an extremely high number of players in the free agent market to either get below the limit or to create space to cater to other rostering needs. The maximum number is also likely to suppress the growth for high-quality transactions in the market.
The pain is expected to be temporary as attendance increases in 2021, and, more importantly, the NFL is working to finalize new broadcasting contracts that are expected to increase revenues above pre-pandemic levels.