The NFL announced good news for the New Orleans Saints and every other team on Friday with its historic salary cap: a $255.4 million spending limit per team that soared past projections that fans, media and the teams themselves had been working with to start the offseason.
While that’s huge for 2024 in itself, it might not be the last time the salary cap grows beyond expectations. This comes from ESPN senior NFL reporter Dan Graziano, who shares an interesting nugget about the future of the league:
“Since the league signed new deals with its broadcast partners in 2021, there has been a belief that 2024 and 2025 would be the first years in which the new TV revenue would really have a noticeable impact on league revenue.”
This lines up with past reporting; on top of the influx of money from the league’s broadcasting partners, deferred costs that kept the NFL going during the 2020 and 2021 COVID-19 pandemic-impacted seasons finally ran out in 2023. There’s nothing holding back the cap from climbing higher but team owners’ greed in keeping a larger share of profits for themselves than what goes to the players.
So where could the cap climb to in 2025? The experts at Over The Cap have not updated their initial projection of $260 million, which was based on past years’ recovery and growth after the pandemic. But that doesn’t reflect the unprecedented leap forward in 2024.
A better estimate comes from the analysts at Spotrac, who are working with a $273.3 million salary cap for 2025. That’s not as great an increase as we saw this offseason, but it does line up with what we’ve seen in recent years. And as ESPN suggests, NFL personnel are anticipating another unexpected leap ahead.
It’s early, and things will change as contracts are reworked and free agents are signed, but right now the Saints lead the league in players under contract for the 2025 season (44 of them). They’re also tapped to spend more money ($325.7 million) than anyone else, putting them further in the red than any team. But that’s always the case. So long as the salary cap continues rising — and by all accounts, it will — you can kick the can down the road.
