In a step that things a few less anxious in the executive offices of the Kansas City Chiefs, the NFL told its teams that the 2021 salary cap will be no less than $ 180 million. ESPN’s Adam Schefter had it first.
The NFL informed teams today that this season’s salary cap will be a minimum of $ 180 million.
– Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) 18 February 2021
Albert Breer van Sports Illustrated’s MMQB climbed in with the memo itself.
According to a memorandum sent to teams, the 2021 salary cap will be set at a minimum of $ 180 million (versus $ 175 million).
This is not the final cap. Only the new minimum. pic.twitter.com/L0wtC8GuGv
– Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) 18 February 2021
Late last summer in talks, the league and the NFL Players Association agreed that the amount would not be less than $ 175 million, so it is only an increase of $ 5 million minimum amount – and as Breer noted, it is not which will be the final maximum number.
So why is this news important for the Chiefs – and the ten other teams that are currently above the salary cap?
The biggest takeaway from this news is that despite the coronavirus pandemic, the league revenue from 2020 has not reached the worst forecasts; the league is already comfortable to increase the minimum amount of the hood. Even if this $ 5 million increase is just a drop in the bucket – which it does – it’s really good news.
As Breer remarked in another tweet, will probably come more.
Two things to remember: re: 2021 salary cap …
1) TV transactions done, as expected, will likely make the owners flexible with the loan of future years.
2) A big drop in the cap hurts MANY people (veteran players, free agents, teams, etc.)
– Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) 18 February 2021
This follows the reporting of NBC Sports’ Peter King Monday morning in his column “Football Morning in America”.
The NFL is close – ‘within a month’, one source told me in the Super Bowl – to sign new ten-year contracts with its network partners that could lead to a total increase of 70 to 100 percent of the rights of the previous contract. .
It is important to remember that the salary cap is mostly driven by revenue from these television contracts. While many stadiums were empty by 2020 – and many others were filled to just a small fraction of their capacity – the NFL managed to get through the season without canceling any games, preventing them from losing broadcast revenue . And as King noted, they will help the NFL set the salary cap on a more workable level if they can make the deals before the league year begins on March 17th.
If the deals are done now, the league could provide the inflow of cash not to have the salary cap teams in March.
After all, there is no reason to expect the salary cap to suddenly return to normal in 2021 – that is, 5-10% higher than the 198.2 million of last season; while the league avoided an absolute revenue disaster in 2020, revenue done go down. But with this news, there is now hope that it could get somewhere closer than it was a year ago.
As I explained on Wednesday, the Chiefs are currently $ 18.1 million more than Spotrac’s projected salary cut of $ 185 million – just $ 5 million more than the new minimum. During Super Bowl week, Chiefs Brett Veach said he and his staff went through scenarios where the cap would be up to $ 175 million – but that “anything over $ 185 million and we’re in a pretty good position. condition is. “
At least for now, Veach and his team can throw away the $ 175 million scenarios – and we can hope that the Chiefs do not have to make very drastic salary cuts in 2021.