The Kansas City Chiefs are getting some much-needed salary-cap relief by rolling over cap space into the 2021 NFL season.
ESPN analyst Field Yates shared a list of all NFL cap space rollovers from 2020 to 2021. According to his numbers, the Chiefs will roll over just under $5.1 million in salary-cap space to the 2021 NFL season. This number is subject to change per Yates as the NFL has yet to audit these amounts to include incentives and cap credits from 2020. This number operates as a rough estimate of what the Chiefs will get toward their 2021 salary cap.
Remember, the NFL salary cap for the 2021 season has a floor of $175 million due to profit losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s $23.2 million less than the 2020 salary cap. The decrease puts a big strain on teams who planned to have over $200 million in cap space to work with for 2021.
A look at how much cap space each NFL team rolled over to 2021, from the Browns ($30,366,604) to the Ravens ($586,822).
The NFL will audit these amounts after calculating incentives and cap credits from this year. The final amounts will be added to each team's cap for 2021. pic.twitter.com/cKen1bbgJ5
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 20, 2021
Depending on where you get your information, the Chiefs are currently listed as $17-18 million over the projected $175 million salary cap total. There are some new reports suggesting that the projected cap number for the league will be closer to $180 million. No matter the case, rolling over this cap space helps Kansas City.
Chiefs GM Brett Veach will still need to work on some cost-cutting measures over the offseason given the lower salary cap number. He’ll look into things like extensions, restructures and roster cuts in order to free up enough space to get the team under the cap, but this helps lessen the burden. We can also assume that K.C. probably won’t be overly active in free agency, beyond retaining a few pieces on ERFA or RFA contracts. They should have no problem finding the rest of the space necessary to get themselves under the cap.
