Figured I'd do a little cap exercise for you all, mostly to show you how accessible true cap data is for those who care about such stuff.
The NFLPA keeps a tally of available cap numbers by team here:
https://nflpa.com/reports/public-salary-cap-report
So, if you check there you'll see they have the Seahawks with precisely
$29,058,755 in available cap. This figure is really just a placeholder as it only factors in the top 51 contracts with a few exceptions. Once we get into the regular season, all active contracts count including practice squad and injured guys. I'm not going into any of that because at the moment this is merely an academic exercise to answer the question --- "can we replicate how that figure was calculated?".
Well, I was able to do it...... almost......
I'm going to refer you to the Spotrac Seahawks page here:
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/seattle-seahawks/overview for reference. As much of a fan of OTC I've been for many years, I just can't deny that Spotrac has surpassed OTC based on depth and accuracy of data.
All these numbers below can be gleaned from the Spotrac page (although I had to add up the contracts manually).
Available cap = Total Cap - Used Cap.
Total Cap = League Cap
$301.2M + 2025 Rollover
$15,029,706 - Adjustments*
($1,176,444) =
$315,053,262
Used Cap = Top 51 Contracts
$284,709,254 + Pro rated bonuses for contracts over top 51
$772,418 + Dead Cap
$513,724 =
$285,995,396
Total Cap - Used Cap =
$29,057,866 Available Cap which is $889 less than the NFLPA posted figure.
One last note, Spotrac does claim the Seahawks have a little less space than that by exactly $25,000 which I'm almost certain is their handling of a potential roster bonus due Shemar Jean-Charles. Part of doing this exercise is I have a pretty good idea that bonus shouldn't count until it's actually paid, although i get why Spotrac figured it should count.
I've done this a few times over the off-season and the $889 keeps showing up and I don't have any good way to bridge the figure. But still, pretty good, eh? Anyone who read this far gets a free cookie.
*I talked about adjustments in an earlier post so I won't go back over that, but Spotrac does show that figure on their site.
www.seahawks.net
