[Racehorse]

Originally Posted by Ironshaft

So, the differences is between the "pre-season" cap calculations and the "in-season" cap calculations.

Pre-season, you do only count the top 51 cap hits, no practice squad cap hit nor account for any "churn" space when a player gets injured and you need to start paying another player to come up from the practice squad.

Almost all the "cap" sites out there are quoting the pre-season numbers. If I were to do so, I would say we have $66.350m in free cap space.

However, I think to do so misses out on the point that there is NO WAY that the team's cap experts do not account for all the things they know they will have to pay once we get in-season.

It is not like they are going to say "hey, look! We have $66.350m to spend this off-season, YOLO!!!" and then get to the end of pre-season and say "oh, crud, we overspent, we need to cut some cap to be legal."

The number I am sure that they have an eye on before the beginning of re-signing their own free agents and trying to attract others is the number where it accounts for ALL their known expenditures, not just the ones they say count during "pre-season." I think using that number is more accurate so....that is why I use it.

So, that, in a nutshell, is why the numbers are different.

That makes sense. I really didn't know churn space mattered that much, seeing that the contracts typically cancel out another player's salary.