The new NFL salary cap is here, and it’s MASSIVE

The NFL is rolling in the dough.

The expectation was that the NFL salary cap was going to rise again in 2025, but nobody had any idea how large the number would be. A memo sent to teams on Wednesday stated that the upcoming cap would fall “between $277.5M and $281.5M,” an increase of over $20M from 2024.

Naturally this will have massive ramifications on free agency and player extensions moving forward. It also falls $5-9M over the estimate from OverTheCap.com, an online resource of team cap figures. As a result of the additional money it has the following effect on some teams:

• The Patriots will have a league-high $116-119M in available cap space
• The Buccaneers, Texans, and Chiefs are now under the cap, when they were projected to be over
• The additional funds mean the Cowboys now have the funds to sign Micah Parsons to an extension worth his market value

Meanwhile the other effect of a raised cap is that desperate teams like the Browns and Saints, both of whom are deep in cap hell, now have a way to continue to kick the can down the road with restructuring. Both teams have largely circumvented the cap with this tactic in the past, and that will continue with an increase in spending.

The reason for the cap increase was greater-than-expected revenue. That is only expected to rise again in 2026 with the league getting new viewership reporting details from Smart TV companies, which will take into greater account numbers from streaming.