Under the cap

[Jared A]

When are teams going to be required to be under the cap?


Prior to FA or how is this going? 2 day flexibility after the start?

[Goodell]

When are teams going to be required to be under the cap?


Prior to FA or how is this going? 2 day flexibility after the start?

Teams are supposed to always be under the cap.

There is a Rule of 51 which the NFL uses so all 90 players on the off-season roster count toward the cap (and just top 51) which we've discussed I think before, but was seen as a bit of a complication.

Teams definitely cannot match contracts if it puts them over the cap, as that's unfair to the signing team that did have the cap space.

We just turned the ability to restructure and cut on, so knew some teams would jump up with tags but have no ability yet to reduce salary until now.

Technically, I believe the FA tool has a check at the start for teams over the cap and prevents bidding as part of the programming if over the cap (unless it was a situation where signing a guy to a minimum rookie deal helped the cap).

We'll have to see how things look across the board the rest of this week into the weekend, but to add a salary it's been that you had to be under the cap in order to keep adding players to prevent teams from keep making situations worse and not allow to keep signing players if already way over the cap. I can't imaging having to undo a situation where a team was dozens of millions over the cap because we let them keep signing players despite being over their cap, so for a while the free agency tool prevented teams from adding if already over.

[soonertf]

Another reason why trades needs to be turned on a few days before FA starts. Real life had several days after FA started to get under cap. I believe several teams were still over a week into FA. I don't want to get in a sticky situation either, but you have to give GMs a chance to get under and we should follow real life as much as possible.

[Royce R]

agreed.

If im trying to sign a replacement for a player, i don't wanna have to cut the player before the replacement is signed.

[Goodell]

Nobody's done any cap enforcement or penalties yet. I understand that not all avenues available to cut payroll yet and some teams might be currently over with that movement in mind once allowed. I mentioned would have trading turned on before our FA.

[Goodell]

agreed.

If im trying to sign a replacement for a player, i don't wanna have to cut the player before the replacement is signed.

All teams have 48 hours to correct situations in such cases and get back under the cap if they go over for that very reason.

But teams can't be millions over the cap and keep signing and signing players over and over going deeper and deeper over their caps. We were like that a bit in the beginning with less restrictions built into the simpler system to much complaint about lacking cap enforcement and frustration over teams continually signing players despite no cap room for them or even being over their caps already and winning bids over teams who did have the cap space for the player. Out of all that frustrations over the years, we added in some automated ways of preventing that abuse and unfairness to teams who were within the financial rules. They weren't added new this year. I haven't changed anything about the free agency tool from how it was last year and before.

This is a salary cap game. Teams have to be within their salary caps. Yes some flexibility now given the situation as mentioned, but no can't have teams way over their caps by tens of millions of dollars signing more and more massive contracts to go deeper and deeper over their caps possibly into situations we couldn't fix. It's not unlimited spending, it's stay within your cap spending.