2024 Colts Cap

[Ironshaft]

Correct me if I am wrong,nbut doesn't the salary cap only include the top 51 players, so practice squad, churn and 52/53 players do not affect it?

I was getting ready to ask... OTC and Spotrac have us at $63.9m and $62.3m respectively. Does ^^ this explain the discrepancy?

Iron's numbers have always been good, so I'm just curious what those sites aren't accounting for.

I had seen where we had over $70 M before we signed a bunch of nobodies to future tenders. I really don't know this stuff like Iron does.

So, the differences is between the "pre-season" cap calculations and the "in-season" cap calculations.

Pre-season, you do only count the top 51 cap hits, no practice squad cap hit nor account for any "churn" space when a player gets injured and you need to start paying another player to come up from the practice squad.

Almost all the "cap" sites out there are quoting the pre-season numbers. If I were to do so, I would say we have $66.350m in free cap space.

However, I think to do so misses out on the point that there is NO WAY that the team's cap experts do not account for all the things they know they will have to pay once we get in-season.

It is not like they are going to say "hey, look! We have $66.350m to spend this off-season, YOLO!!!" and then get to the end of pre-season and say "oh, crud, we overspent, we need to cut some cap to be legal."

The number I am sure that they have an eye on before the beginning of re-signing their own free agents and trying to attract others is the number where it accounts for ALL their known expenditures, not just the ones they say count during "pre-season." I think using that number is more accurate so....that is why I use it.

So, that, in a nutshell, is why the numbers are different.