Salary cap
An NFL term
A hard limit on what every NFL team may spend on player salaries in a season. It is the same number for all 32 teams and rises with league revenue, and no team may exceed it for any reason.
Hard means hard. Unlike some leagues, there is no luxury tax to pay your way past it. A team over the cap cannot sign anyone until it gets under.
The cap is tied to league revenue under the collective bargaining agreement, so it climbs as television money climbs.
It is why good players get cut. A team is not judging the player, it is judging the cap charge against what else that money buys.
You’ll hear it like this
They were tight against the cap, so the extension was structured to push charges into later years.
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Checked 2026-08-07.