2018 Draft: Chiefs Salary Cap Implications
・ By Paul Pulley
If you are reading this, take what I have written with a grain of salt. The information used for this article came from overthecap.com and spotrac.com, while both sites do their very best to provide accurate and up to date information but they are limited by the sources for the information. As of this writing, neither site has salary numbers for Matt McGloin or Kerwynn Williams. In addition, Spotrac doesn’t have info for Anthony Sherman, nor do they even have Jordan Sterns listed on the roster for the Chiefs.
The NFL has a hard salary cap, which means that at no time can a team go over the cap. Every transaction that takes place in the NFL has to be approved by the League before it can be made official, which is why it can be several days between when we hear of a deal and when the deal is officially announced.
There are creative ways to maneuver salaries to fit more higher paid players under a given years cap, such as big signing bonuses and back loaded contracts, but that will usually end up costing a team in the long run, often in the form of dead money.
Dead money is a term used to describe monies that count against a teams salary cap for a player that is no longer on the team. With a few exceptions, the dead money normally only counts against the current years cap. The main exception is a player with multiple years left on his contract that is released after the 1st of June, his remaining guaranteed salary cap number is then spread over two years, but no more than two.
For 2018, according to OTC, the Chiefs have $16,672,831 dead money of which $4,800,000 (29%) is for Jeremy Maclin. As of this time, there is no dead money for 2019.
'Fun' fact Chiefs 11th highest paid player this year is Jeremy Maclin. His 4.8m in dead money puts him just over Mahomes and just under Sorenson, cap hit wise.
— ChieflyBacon (@3GravyCats) April 30, 2018
Every spring, shortly before the beginning of the new league year, the NFL sets the salary cap for the upcoming year. For 2018, the salary cap is $177,200,000. Added to this number is the carryover, which is the unused salary cap space from the previous year. The carryover will be different for every team, therefore each team has their own salary cap ceiling.
The 2018 carryover ranged from a low of $69,161 for the Miami Dolphins to a high of $58,912,960 for the Cleveland Browns. The carryover for the Chiefs was $2,600,000 giving Kansas City a 2018 salary cap of $179,800,000.
Beginning at the start of the League Year and continuing until just prior to the start of the regular season, each team is allowed to have up to 90 players on their roster. During this period, only the Top 51 (the 51 largest salary cap numbers) count against the cap. If a team signs a player that fits in the top 51, then the previous #51 cap number becomes #52 and is subtracted.
A simple example would be: New Player A- signs for $1,500,000 while Player #51 has a cap number of $500,000. Player A’s salary is added to the top 51 list and old Player #51 becomes Player #52 and his salary is subtracted. Therefore the salary cap is changed by $1,000,000 ($1,500,000 added and $500,000 subtracted equal $1,000,000).
The bottom of the top 51 for the Chiefs, salary numbers 51, 50, 49 and 48 are each $630,000. Any player drafted with a salary lower than this will not count against the cap throughout the off-season and training camp.
A new Collective Bargaining Agreement was put in place in 2011 between the League and the Players. Without going into any detail on that, suffice it to say that part of the CBA was a Rookie Wage Scale. Since 2011, rookie salaries are basically set with very little maneuvering room, therefore an agent has little reason to have his newly drafted player holdout. More importantly, rookie wages are now a known quantity and can be projected with a fair amount of accuracy.
The Kansas City Chiefs Draft Picks
and Their Salary Cap Numbers
In the 2018 draft the Chiefs have selected players at these draft selections:
Since the lowest salaries of the Chiefs top 51 is $630,000, the two 6th round picks will not have an immediate effect on the 2018 salary cap as their salary will be less than that amount.
For the off-season 2018 salary cap purposes, only these drafted players will have an immediate but, as you can see, quite limited salary cap implication.
I have taken the projected salary of the draft picks and subtracted the salary of the player whose listed roster position they will replace, leaving the dollar amount that the Top 51 cap space will be reduced by.
OTC shows the Chiefs to currently have a cap space of $6,723,721. The 2018 draft selections will only reduce the off-season top 51 cap space by $622,886, leaving the Chiefs with just over $6M in cap room, $6,100,835. A reminder that this number does not include salaries for McGloin or K Williams.
- Assuming that all drafted players will make the team, I included the 2019 cap number as this total will count against the current 2019 cap.
- Prior to the draft, the Chiefs had 39 players (give or take 1 or 2) under contract for the 2019 season.
- Spotrac has the 2019 cap hit at —-> $155,968,933
- OTC has the 2019 cap hit at ——-> $146,204,318
The discrepancy is apparently spotrac is assuming the Chiefs will exercise Cameron Erving’s 5th year option for $9,625,000. Unless and until that happens, I’m going to use OTC’s cap number for 2019 and add the projected 2019 cap number for the 2018 draft picks and we will have a cap number for 2019 of $151,111,726 with 45 players (39 currently, plus 6 draft picks) under contract for 2019.
This will leave us $26,088,274 of cap space for 2019. I am basing this number off of the 2018 base cap of $177,200,000 whereas OTC is using a base of $190M for 2019. Any increase in the salary cap for 2019 will of course increase the amount of cap space the Chiefs will have to work with next year.
I am also not including any projection for 2018 cap rollover, but we could have an idea of this after cut-downs this fall and the 53 man roster is set. We will also have to add in the practice squad and if any player ends up on IR, etc.
For those of you who use spotrac instead of OTC, you will find that the numbers differ slightly from what I have used here, but I believe this to be as accurate as can be made with the available information.
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