The NFL’s salary cap will rise to $255.4 million next year, an increase of $30.6 million for each team from the 2023 year, the league announced in a statement. Not only will the salary cap be the highest in league history, the change is the largest year-to-year increase since the NFL first implemented the salary cap in 1994.
There are several reasons for the record-breaking salary cap number, with one reason being an influx of media revenue in 2024 coming from new media deals and playoff expansion. The NFL said that this cap spike also includes a “full repayment of all amounts advanced by the clubs and deferred by the players during the Covid pandemic.”
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Projections initially had the cap increasing by between $16 million to $20 million, as it did last year, but the addition of COVID-19 repayments seems to ballooned the cap to its actual number. 2024 will be just the third season where the cap is above $200 million, and it was only four years ago that the cap decreased as a result of the pandemic.
The news of the cap increase comes less than a month from the beginning of the new league year on March 13. Teams can now adjust their free agency plans knowing they will have more cap space in the offseason than previously projected.
