The rich keep getting richer, and when you’re the No. 1 entertainment option in the United States of America you can do that. Such is the case with the NFL, as reports indicate the league is set to raise the salary cap to $155 million this upcoming season.
I'm told the NFL's salary cap is expected to jump to at least $155M this year. Nearly $12M more than last year's ($143.28M).
— Rand Getlin (@Rand_Getlin) February 15, 2016
That extra money could be very helpful to some teams at or exceeding the salary cap from last season.
No team is better helped by this news than the Buffalo Bills, who rank dead last in salary cap space according to spotrac.com. The Bills, along with fellow NFL East division rivals the New England Patriots, were just one of two teams in the negative heading in to the offseason.
That will change a bit with this announcement, but both teams will clearly have a lot of work in front of them.
On the other end of the spectrum, no team will have more money to spend in the offseason than the Jacksonville Jaguars. They’ll have around $75 million to play with, and are one of two teams with around $70 million in cap space this offseason. The other team? The Oakland Raiders.
The rest of the top five (New York Giants, Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers) all have around $50 million or more in cap space available to them.
Having the extra $12 million available to teams means big time free agents like Von Miller, Josh Norman, Alshon Jeffery and Eric Berry are in for big pay days as unrestricted free agents. Some of these players will likely get franchised tagged or work out long term extensions but for those who do hit free agency will likely find themselves benefitting from the extra cap space and handful of teams with lots of money available to bolster their rosters.
