Before signing any members of their 2019 NFL draft class, the Denver Broncos have $10,482,067 in remaining salary cap space, according to totals from the NFL Players Association.
The team added six players in April’s draft and it will cost $6,719,467 in 2019 salary cap space to sign them, according to Spotrac.com. But it’s not as simple as subtracting $6.7 million from $10.4 million to figure out how much cap the team will have left after signing their draft class.
NFL teams are allowed to carry 90 players on the roster during the offseason but only the players with the top 51 salaries will count against the salary cap. So some of the team’s rookies will bump players that previously counted against the cap out of the top 51.
So for example, if tight end Noah Fant had a cap hit of $1 million this year, he would bump the last player on the top 51 list off the team’s cap total. Right now that’s safety Trey Marshall, who has a $570,000 cap hit.
So instead of Fant costing $1 million against the cap, he would have a net cap hit of $430,000 after bumping down another player. (That’s just an example — we’re uncertain what Fant’s cap hit will be this season.)
We won’t know for sure how much salary cap space is remaining until the rookies are officially signed. But it’s probably safe to assume Denver will have some leftover space to roll over into the 2020 season.
