Is the Salary Cap a Myth?
Is the salary cap a myth? Yes, no, sorta.
Obviously, the salary cap is not a complete fiction—there is a number—$279.2 million, in 2025—below which NFL teams must keep their budget.
But there is more to the story than this. A team’s cap hit is not a simple accounting of the combined salaries of the players on the 2025 roster—it includes a rollover from player salaries from previous seasons, and it may be decreased by deferring salaries from this season into future cap hits.
Furthermore, whereas the salary cap has increased steadily in recent years—it rose by about 9% from 2024 to 2025–player cap hits can be deferred *interest-free* to future seasons. This creates a system that can be easily manipulated, incentivizing teams to defer cap hits into future years and thereby allowing them to spend more than the $279.2 million cap number would lead you to believe.
Eventually, of course, the bill must come due. A team can’t defer a player’s cap hit indefinitely. That said, when one player’s cap hit finally hits the books, another’s can be pushed yet further into the future.
Unlike in the real world—where delaying your credit card payments is a sure recipe for disaster—the interest-free salary cap scheme means that a team never has to get fully out of debt. Indeed, to be fully out of debt likely means a team squandered an opportunity to improve at some point in the past.
Players who are cut this time of year in the name of saving money are sometimes called “cap casualties.” But it’s worth noting that similar cuts happen in the MLB, too—a league that doesn’t have a salary cap.
All this suggests that while the salary cap is not quite a myth, a given team’s remaining cap space is. Given the malleable nature of the NFL salary cap, it’s perhaps best not to think of the Vikings’ approach to free agency in terms of remaining cap space but rather in terms of player value added.
If a player is valuable enough to the team, there is almost always a way to maneuver cap hits so as to fit them in. But at the same time, there are players that simply aren’t worth their price tag, regardless of the Vikings’ cap space or their ability to perform cap gymnastics.
Practically, this means that the Vikings’ cap space may not be the best indication of how much—or little—they plan to spend in free agency. It’s very possible that the team will decide that they don’t like the most high-profile free agents enough to justify their price tags, even if they are left with unspent savings.
Instead, the main factor in the Vikings’ strategy for free agency has been the holes on their roster: they would be ill-advised to show up to the draft with holes in the defensive secondary, offensive line, and QB room. Expect the Vikings to continue to fill these holes in the next few days, regardless of the price tag.
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