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Washington Commanders News

The dust that is NFL Free Agency has settled, so naturally, people want to know just how much salary cap space their favorite team has moving forward.

In the case of the Washington Commanders, things look pretty good overall. The team currently has 68 rostered players and $23,286,481 in cap space, per Over The Cap.

However, that’s not the true amount. It’s just surface level. For starters, the Commanders still have to pay their eventual draft class that they’ll compose in a little more than a month. Over The Cap, projects that at $2,306,030, which knocks the Commanders down to $20,980,431 in cap space, or, effective cap space.

Then, you want to deduct around $5 million for in-season operating money, such as injury signings and whatnot. Next up is another $5.5 million for the practice squad. Both numbers are more on the conservative end of things, but it’s always good to have cap room and not need it than the other way around.

So now, we’re sitting at $10,480,431 in cap space. Things are starting to get a little tight, no?

Well, they’re going to get tighter. We don’t have official contract numbers for the following players: Noah Brown, Noah Igbinoghene, Nick Bellore, Deatrich Wise, K.J. Osborn, Sheldon Day, Jacob Martin, Jalyn Holmes, Jeremy McNichols, and Foster Sarell.

We have numbers for Brown’s, Wise’s, and Martin’s contracts, but the full structure details aren’t out yet and they are one-year deals, so we’ll have to use their total contract numbers of $4.5 million, $5 million, and $3 million as the Year 1 cap hits. We don’t have any numbers for the rest of the deals, so we’ll apply veteran minimum salaries to get an idea of what things will look like. These guys will have to get paid the minimum and we have those numbers, so it’ll help get us closer to where we’re trying to go.

In total, we’re looking at about $20,875,000 in allocated cap space for unaccounted contracts.

The key with these 10 deals is they’ll cancel out the bottom-10 cap hits, per the league’s Top-51 rule. The bottom-10 cap hits amount to $10,060,296. So, in actuality, the unknown deals take up about $10,814,704 in cap room.

If we subtract that from the above number of $10,480,431, that puts the Commanders $334,273 over the cap, but remember, we have that $10.5 million set aside for practice squad and in-season operating money. Therefore, it’d be around $9,155,727 in cap space. Again, that room is needed for basic operational stuff, so it shouldn’t be touched.

However, that likely means very little to no more spending in free agency. This number is also unofficial, but it should come in pretty close to what the Commanders have. Once we get the Year 1 numbers in the undisclosed contracts, we’ll have a much better idea, but it’s safe to say this is a solid estimate.

The Commanders can quickly open up more room and the easy answer is a Terry McLaurin extension. He’s coming off the best year of his career and has immediately developed a Pro Bowl-caliber rapport with Jayden Daniels. Add all that on top of the fact that he’s beloved in both the locker room and the community and it’s clear the man needs to get paid what he’s worth.

The Commanders could take a good chunk of his $15.5 million base salary and restructure it into a signing bonus or whatever language is necessary to prorate it for however many years. That would open up a solid amount of space and if Peters wants, he could do some restructuring with Daron Payne’s deal, but extending McLaurin makes the most sense, right now.

Either way, the Commanders are in pretty good shape. It is pretty wild to think they started the offseason with over $70 million in cap room and it’s already dwindled down to this, but hey, that’s just how life goes in the NFL. Regardless, they’re fine and it honestly won’t surprise me if the above number is a bit higher due to contract structures like void years and whatnot.

Final cap space estimation as of March 20: $9,155,727