Examining dead money and injured reserve spending at NFL’s quarter-season mark
Posted by Andrea Hangst on Oct 5, 2016 11:00



PITTSBURGH, PA – NOVEMBER 30: Linebacker Junior Galette #93


Nothing may be more frustrating to an NFL front office than paying players to not play. Whether it is due to injury or cutting a player while still having a significant salary cap commitment to him, throwing away money in the NFL — even in a world where teams routinely have well over $100 million to spend in a year — is not the ideal way to do business.

There are two ways that cap space can be eaten up for players who are not on the field for a given team. One is, as mentioned, via injury. Players placed on injured reserve continue to earn their yearly salaries, even if they don’t end up being their respective team’s “return from injury” player (who, this year, does not have to be designated as such at the outset of his injury).

The other is via dead money, or guaranteed money that remained on the contract of a released player. Though these players don’t get paid the amount still outstanding on their deals, the money still counts against their former teams’ salary caps. Sometimes, this money can stretch beyond the current year. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers cut running back Dri Archer last November, but still have $253,008 in cap space dedicated to his dead money this year.

Needless to say, dead money hurts teams more than cap space dedicated to injured players, given that the injured players would, presumably, be on the field if healthy. But the greatest ability in the NFL is, as the cliche goes, availability. Money spent on players unavailable, for whatever reason, is never a goal — even though it is part of the business.

The New Orleans Saints lead the league in dead money this year, just as they did in 2015. The Saints have had salary cap troubles for years, which has led them to offloading contracts in order to save cap space. The flip side, though, is that while these roster cuts do save them more cash than had they retained the players, the dead money is still not a negligible amount.

The Saints have a whopping 38 players with dead-money charges this year, including $12.1 million for linebacker Junior Galette. Their dead money total for the season is $37,885,635. On top of that, 14 players are currently on the Saints’ injured reserve list, a cap hit that as of now totals $8,261,351 and is almost guaranteed to change — and to rise — as the season wears on.


Examining dead money and injured reserve spending at NFL

NFL Salary cap $155.27 million
dead money $37,885,635
Or 24.4% of the cap is no where to be found

IR money $8,261,351
Wahhoo that puts us over 25% at 29.7% of the cap not able to play for the saints

Now that is a lot of cheddar .

Keep it up and I have to ask if the saints will set a record for the first team in NFL history to achieve the 1/3 threshold of cap money not playing for any given season.

So yes I am still actually surprised the saints are doing as well as they are. 2017 ... 2017 ... 2017 ... 2017

In the last two years, the Saints FO would will have carried over 75M in dead money.

Wow.

In the last two years, the Saints FO will have carried over 75M in dead money.

Wow.