The early salary cap rollover figures for each NFL team are out, and the Detroit Lions won’t carry much extra into 2022.
After a suppressed year in 2021, the NFL salary cap will go back up in 2022, to a projected $208.2 million. But teams can carry over unused cap space from 2021 into the new year, effectively adding to their cap room and created an unique adjusted cap figure for each team.
ESPN’s Field Yates has offered the current cap rollover figures (unused money) from 2021 for all 32 teams, while allowing for corrections that will come when the league audits incentives, bonuses, etc after the playoffs. The Jacksonville Jaguars lead the way with $25.7 million in rollover money, but it’s fair to say the incentive former Lions wide receiver Marvin Jones earned in Week 18 hasn’t been accounted for yet.
All in all, the order of the list isn’t likely to change too dramatically across the league once everything is accounted for, even if incentives and such shift the money amounts.
The Lions won’t carry much cap rollover into 2022
Down the list a good ways is the Detroit Lions, with $1,079,476 in current cap rollover. Only eight teams (Jets, Falcons, Ravens, Raiders, Saints, Rams, Patriots and Giants) have less.
As injuries and COVID-19 thinned the roster, the Lions restructured guard Halipoulivaati Vaitai’s contract to create some cap room to get through the rest of the 2021 season. That move created $1 million in cap space–or more precisely nearly all of their current amount of cap rollover.
According to Spotrac, the Lions have just shy of $30.7 million in cap space for 2022 right now ($30,695,819; good for the 14th-most current cap space in the league). So they will have some room to spend in free agency anyway. An extra $1 million or so can’t hurt, there just won’t be a huge boon to Detroit’s money pool when it’s all said and done.