The NFL sent a memo to teams this week that the 2025 NFL salary cap is expected to increase beyond initial estimates.
The NFL has yet to finalize the salary cap for the 2025 season, but ESPN’s Dan Graziano is reporting that pending a few decisions from the NFLPA, the limit is expected to land between $277.5 million and $281.5 million.
For reference, the 2024 salary cap was set at $255 million, meaning this is a potential increase of between $22 and $26 million. That’s a fairly significant jump to make in one season, but it’s not unheard of either, as we have seen increases of $26, $16, and $31 million in the previous three seasons (since COVID restrictions).
Here’s a look at how the salary cap has changed over the last decade:
- 2016: $155.27M
- 2017: $167M
- 2018: $177.2M
- 2019: $188.2M
- 2020: $198.2M
- 2021: $182.5M (No fan attendance due to COVID restrictions)
- 2022: $208.2M
- 2023: $224.8M
- 2024: $255.4M
- 2025: est. $277.5M and $281.5M
As for what this means for the Detroit Lions, this increase will give them even more wiggle room to make roster decisions—but we’re still a few steps away from knowing exactly how much they’ll have to spend this offseason.
For example, the NFL is still processing “adjustments from 2024” based on contract bonuses—factoring in things like “not likely to be earned” (NLTBE) and “per-game” bonuses—which could slightly alter the Lions’ spending window. For reference, last season, the Lions were docked a little less than $165,000 in adjustments.
Additionally, the Lions are also eligible to “roll over” any unused funds from 2024, which will increase their available spending limit. In 2024, the Lions were able to rollover over $3.5M from 2023, which offset the adjustments while also increasing the overall salary cap by $3.35M. The Lions are estimated to have over $23M in rollover funds available in 2025.
At this time, using the lower estimated amount of $277.5M and estimating adjustments and rollover, the Lions are projected to have $51.9M in available cap space, according to OverTheCap.com. Per OTC, this would give the Lions the 10th most cap space in the NFL at this time.
