The NFL and NFL Players Association on Wednesday agreed on a salary cap of $ 182.5 million per team for 2021, a much-anticipated 8% drop from last season, sources told Adam Schefter of ESPN.
The refund will force teams to make difficult list decisions in the coming days and weeks.
Ceiling limits have been rising every year since 2011 in conjunction with rising league revenues, but a 92 percent drop in participation during the COVID-19 pandemic led to lower revenues in 2020. The NFL and NFLPA agreed last summer that the cap would not be less than $ 175 million; last month they informed the teams that it would be at least 180 million dollars. It 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 projected revenues and other factors. A source told ESPN’s Dan Graziano that in the absence of these negotiated projections, the league’s 2020 revenue would have dictated a ceiling of about $ 160 million this season.
Teams must meet the ceiling by Wednesday, at 16:00 ET, when the new league year begins. The planning has been going on for a year, but teams are expected to launch an unusually large number of players in the free agent market, either to enter below the limit or to create space to meet other list needs. The ceiling number is likely to depress growth for state-of-the-art transactions in the market.
The pain is expected to be temporary as the presence grows in 2021 and, more significantly, the NFL is working to finalize new broadcast contracts that are expected to raise revenues well above pre-pandemic levels.