This week, the NFL announced the 2018 salary cap at $177.2 million, up more than $10 million from 2017. While the Buffalo Bills have been pretty tight up against the salary cap in recent years, dead cap space is coming off and Buffalo has enough cap space to make a deal or two in free agency coming up next week.
According to Spotrac, Buffalo is under the league average (roughly $33 million) with $25.6 million in available top-51 cap space (not including the Chris Ivory deal, where figures are unavailable at the time of this article). The top 51 contracts are the only contracts that count against the salary cap during the offseason.
If you factor in the projected $8.5 million needed to sign the team’s rookie class, it leaves the Bills with $17.1 million to sign pending free agents (again, not counting the Chris Ivory deal).
Buffalo was able to roll over nearly $11.6 million in salary cap space they didn’t use in 2017 and it is included in the numbers above.
* - These figures do not include the Chris Ivory deal.
NFL salary cap: $177.2 million
Bills 2017 rollover: $11.6 million
Bills 2018 adjusted salary cap: $188.8 million
Bills Top-51 contracts*: $144.5 million
Anticipated 2018 rookie cost: $8.5 million
Bills 2018 dead money: $18.7 million
Bills 2018 adjusted cap accounted for*: $171.7 million
Bills adjusted salary cap space for free agency*: $17.1 million