The NFL offseason is officially upon us, which means that fans around the country have to become amateur accounts just to keep up with the action around the league. Before free agency begins, every team needs to know exactly how much money they have to spend under the salary cap — and that often means making some tough decisions about which players are and are not a part of their future.
But what actually goes into that determination. How does the NFL's contract math work, anyway? Here are (hopefully) simple answers to all the questions you've ever had about the league's salary cap and player contracts.
What is dead cap money when an NFL player is cut?
"Dead money" refers to any salary cap charge still in a team's books for a player no longer on that team's roster. How do you wind up still on the hook for a player you're no longer employing? The answer has to do with the pecularities of NFL contracts.
Every NFL contract includes both guaranteed and non-guaranteed money. Players are paid a base salary, but because they would rather get paid up front rather than wait for game checks, much of the guaranteed portions of their deals are comprised of bonuses: signing bonuses, option bonuses and certain roster bonuses that are paid as one-time lump sums.
To avoid a player having a massive salary cap hit in year one, the cost of those bonuses can be spread across a team's cap for up to five years. But that does come with a degree of risk: If a player is released before the end of their contract, all the remaining guaranteed money accelerates onto the team's current salary cap — thus becoming dead money. For example: Two offseasons ago, Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs signed a four-year deal that included a $12.5 million signing bonus, prorated over the life of the contract. If the Packers cut Jacobs this spring, the remaining $6.25 milion of that bonus will accelerate onto the team's cap as dead money.
What is the difference between a pre-June 1 and post-June 1 cut?
The only way a team can prevent all of a released player's remaining guaranteed money from accelerating onto its cap at once is to mess with the timing a bit. Per NFL rules, if a team waits until June 2 or later to cut a player, they can then spread that player's dead cap hit over the next two seasons rather than paying for it all at once. You'll often see this with the biggest contracts, ones with prohibitive dead cap hits (think Russell Wilson's $85 million albatross in Denver) that teams don't want clogging their books all at once.
Of course, the free agency frenzy takes place back in March, and players who are about to be cut aren't wild about being tied up with their old team until early June. That's why the league created post-June 1 designations: Each team can designated up to two players as post-June 1 cuts, releasing them immediately while keeping their full cap hit on the books. Then, on June 2, the remaining dead money gets spread over the next two years.
What happens when a player is cut with no cap savings?
Sometimes, a team will make the decision to move on from a player despite the fact that doing so will actually cost them money in the short term. Let's use Kirk Cousins as an example. The Falcons QB is currently set for a $24.6 million cap hit this season: $2.1 million in base salary, $12.5 million in prorated signing bonus and $10 million in roster bonus money. But Atlanta has reason to want to finally be done with the Cousins experiment, despite the fact that cutting him before June 1 would accelerate the remaining bonus money onto this year's cap and bump his dead cap hit up to $35 million.
Of course, the Cousins situation is a rare one. A team would have to be so desperate to get rid of a player that they're willing to tie up more of their cap to do so. But it's also worth noting that none of this actually affects the timing or amount of payments that a player receives; this is all just a matter of accounting, and how and when money shows up on a team's books.
Which big names could be cap casualties this offseason?
So, what does all that mean for the coming offseason? There are some very big names whose production has now fallen behind their cap hits, and their teams could be willing to move on and realize some savings that they can reroute elsewhere on their roster.
- WR Davante Adams, Los Angeles Rams ($18 million in 2026 savings)
- WR Brandon Aiyuk, San Francisco 49ers ($7.052 million in 2026 savings)
- DT Kenny Clark, Dallas Cowboys ($21.5 million in 2026 savings)
- WR Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins ($35.2 million in 2026 savings)
- CB Marlon Humphrey, Baltimore Ravens ($19.25 million in 2026 savings)
- RB Josh Jacobs, Green Bay Packers ($11.4 million in 2026 savings)
- RB Alvin Kamara, New Orleans Saints ($8.5 million in 2026 savings)
- CB Marshon Lattimore, Washington Commanders ($18.5 million in 2026 savings)
- WR Calvin Ridley, Tennessee Titans ($18.4 million in 2026 savings)
- OT Jawaan Taylor, Kansas City Chiefs ($20 million in 2026 savings)