A couple of days ago, it was revealed that ESPN asked 100 of their highest-paid on air talent to take pay-cuts of 15 percent. This is obviously a result of Covid-19 as ESPN wants to be able to pay their lower employees and are asking their top talent to reduce their pay to give ESPN that ability. A very similar situation could happen in the NFL with their star players.
Comparing the Two Situation
While ESPN is not salary capped, the global pandemic that is Covid-19 has made a mess of ESPN’s ability to collect revenue. The loss of games, as well as a loss of new highlights for “SportsCenter” has resulted in a decrease in ratings and as a result a decrease in revenue. A decrease in revenue means that there is a much smaller pie to pay their employees, and those getting multi-million dollar paychecks now take up a bigger piece of the pie. The top talent agreeing to a pay-cut helps solve this issue, and it’s reasonable to believe that many NFL stars players will be approached with similar requests for in large part the same reasons, some teams won’t have sufficient funds to pay certain people and the added factor of the salary cap.
How do Games Without Fans or Reduced Games Affect Salary Cap?
The Salary Cap in the NFL is used as an equalizer to help small market teams compete with bigger market teams in terms of paying players. While the trend for the past few years is a stead increase, that is because of NFL revenue increasing. However, with the uncertainty due to Covid-19 it isn’t out of the question to think that the salary cap could in fact decrease between the 2020 and 2021 NFL seasons. If games are played without fans in the stadiums or if games are lost due to a shortened season, that’s billions of dollars lost in ticket, concessions, suite, Pro Shop and parking revenue. This loss in revenue could result in a decrease in the Salary Cap, at the very least it would stay the same.
Why Does It Matter?
Every year during free agency, we see “Cap-Casualties.” Players teams cut simply because they cost too much and they need to save cap space, like Mark Barron and Anthony Chickolo for the Steelers, Taylor Gabriel and Prince Amukamara for the Bears and Desmond Trufant for the Atlanta Falcons just to name a few. If the salary cap in the 2021 season were to decrease because of the loss in revenue due to Covid-19, teams would be pressed against the Salary Cap even more than they would have been already and some teams would be over the cap instead of under it.
Consequences
According to overthecap.com the projected NFL Salary Cap for the 2021 season is $215 million, projecting a $16.8 million increase. If this increase does not occur the Atlanta Falcons would now be over the salary cap. The Eagles would be over $41 million OVER the cap and the Saints would be over the cap by $26 million. Players with large cap hits may need to be cut or take major pay-cuts, the first example that comes to mind is star player Ben Roethlisberger. He alone has a cap hit of over $40 million in 2021, I think it’s safe to say that currently at his age and coming off a major elbow injury, he isn’t worth that much money. Star players Robert Quinn, Khalil Mack and Kyle Fuller are have cap hits of $14.7 million, $26.6 million and $20 million respectively. If the Bears would hope to make any moves in the off-season, they would likely need to part ways with one of those contracts. Or the alternative is asking star players to take pay-cuts. In result of a Salary Cap decrease, teams could very well do the same thing ESPN did and ask their top talent and highest paid players to take a pay-cut. Will players agree? That’s a different story.
