When it comes to the National Football League's salary cap, the prevailing wisdom has been that it was going to spike significantly higher when the league's new television contract kicked in for the 2014 season. This would have been huge for a team like the Minnesota Vikings, who are in the middle of a rebuilding process and could potentially have gotten a boost from a significant increase in the cap number.
However, ESPN.com NFC North blogger Kevin Seifert is reporting that this will not be the case.
According to Clayton, the NFL management council informed teams last week that the 2015 salary cap projects to about $122 million. That's not much of an increase from 2011 or 2012, and it's actually lower than the $123 million teams had in 2009.
The explanation is complicated and multi-faceted, but Detroit Lions president Tom Lewand offered one set of reasons last week. While the NFL's new TV contract will feature a substantially higher annual average when it begins in 2014, the first- and second-year revenue will be lower than the average. The cap will increase gradually as a result, but won't spike in the first year.
This means that it's going to be more important than ever for teams to manage their cap properly, and it might be a good thing that the Vikings haven't gone crazy this off-season while being under the impression that the cap was going to be significantly higher in a couple of years.