clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

NFL Free Agency 2016: Salary Cap set at $155.27 million, per reports

All 32 NFL teams now know how much cap space they'll have to work with this offseason. Will the Bengals use their cap space to re-sign George Iloka, arguably their top free agent?

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

The Bengals are coming off a great season and they hope to build off of it and make a deeper postseason run next year, but to make that happen, they need to re-sign most, if not all of their key free agents.

With the NFL Scouting Combine now here, it won't be long until they'll be making some hard decisions regarding next year's roster.  As of now, Cincinnati is set to have double-digit starters hit free agency in March unless their contracts are extended between now and then.

The good news is, the NFL salary cap is going to be bigger than it's ever been in the coming season. That may help the Bengals be able to re-sign their own players, but then again, it may also help another team try to overpay for Cincy's free agents.

Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk are hearing that the salary cap for next year is going to be $155.27 million:

Here are the most recent 2016 cap projections for the Bengals based on a base salary cap of  $155 million, via Over The Cap.

Team

Cap Space

Players Signed

Team Salary Cap

Active Cap Spending

Dead Money

Bengals

$38,723,157

56

$162,712,902

$123,796,474

$193,271

This means the Bengals have about $40 million to work with this offseason.

Here are the Bengals' 2016 free agents arranged by their 2015 cap hit:

PLAYER

POS

AGE

'15 Salary Cap

STATUS

Leon Hall

CB

30

$9,600,000

UFA

Andre Smith

RT

28

$6,362,500

UFA

Reggie Nelson

S

31

$4,775,000

UFA

Vincent Rey

OLB

27

$3,100,000

UFA

Adam Jones

CB

31

$2,550,000

UFA

Emmanuel Lamur

OLB

25

$2,356,000

UFA

Wallace Gilberry

DE

30

$2,050,000

UFA

Mohamed Sanu

WR

25

$1,682,813

UFA

George Iloka

S

25

$1,582,075

UFA

Eric Winston

RT

31

$950,000

UFA

Brandon Thompson

DT

25

$795,300

UFA

Marvin Jones

WR

25

$700,700

UFA

Brandon Tate

WR

27

$665,000

UFA

Pat Sims

DT

29

$665,000

UFA

T.J. Johnson

C

24

$510,000

ERFA

Marvin Jones, Leon Hall, Adam Jones, George Iloka, and Reggie Nelson are all going to command sizable contracts in free agency, and, they should have the money to re-sign most of them, especially if they extend Kevin Zeitler and Dre Kirkpatrick's contracts instead of paying them on their fifth year options, which each are currently slated to receive. The good news is the Bengals can pass on re-signing Andre Smith after drafting two tackles in the first two rounds of the 2015 NFL Draft. He'll probably get a nice contract as well, but it won't be in Cincinnati.

The Bengals will also need to keep around $5-7 million of the final cap saved up in order to sign 2016 draft picks and have some emergency funds to sign players during next season. They tend to keep close to that limit every year, as evidenced by the $7.5 million carryover cap they're adding on to their cap this year.

Free agency will be here in two weeks, so the Bengals need to get moving now if they want to keep their roster intact and make a run at next year's Super Bowl.