On Friday, Over TheCap’s Jason Fitzgerald published an essay discussing salary cap flexibility in the league heading into 2024. His approach goes beyond merely looking at projected cap space based on current contracts, while that is a good starting point. According to Fitzgerald, the Lions will have the seventh most cap space in 2024. The following figures are listed in the first column of the table at the bottom of the salary cap flexibility article:
NFL teams with most projected salary cap room for 2024 (51 man roster, $242M cap)
1. Titans- $75.5M
2. Commanders- $74.5M
3. Patriots- $70.5M
4. Colts- $66.1M
5. Texans- $64.3M
6. Bengals- $58.2M
7. Bears- $53.5M
8. Cardinals- $47.7M
9. Lions- $47.4M
10. Raiders- $40.7M— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) December 21, 2023
Fitzgerald then attempted to find contracts that would generate net savings (“cap hit minus dead money minus the $795K cost for a replacement player”) of at least $1 million if that contract was cut in order to better understand how constrained each team is by contracts beyond that simple number. Such players were deemed release candidates, and the Lions roster contained five of them (for a net savings of almost $45 million if all five were cut).
Given the circumstances, he most likely identified Jared Goff, Taylor Decker, Tracy Walker, John Cominsky, and Isaiah Buggs as the five Lions. Now, most of those guys are not going to be cut, so this is all just speculation. Goff, Decker, and Cominsky are not going anywhere. In any event, having the option of eliminating players whose contracts result in large savings may be regarded (I suppose) a measure of flexibility.
Fitzgerald’s second approach to flexibility was restructures:
Because we want maximum salary cap relief, I took each player’s salary and reduced it to the bare minimum, assuming that we would add enough years so that the bonus could be prorated to five years. I also done this for every player having a roster bonus. If the total of their savings exceeded $1 million, I considered them a restructuring candidate.
Not surprisingly, the Lions are already smartly arranging their contracts, leaving little room for such cap shenanigans. The Lions are eighth from the bottom in the second table in the article, with only $60.4 million in maximum restructuring gains if everyone was reorganized to the hilt. However, Fitzgerald informs the reader that restructuring is a short-term solution because “each year in the future will be more difficult for the cap by taking this path.” So, if the aim is a long-term winning roster, restructuring is definitely not something we’d want to see the Lions do a lot of.
