The Salary Cap Cost of Rookie Draft Picks | Over the Cap
The Salary Cap Cost of Rookie Draft Picks | Over the Cap
overthecap.com
As time goes on there will be reports of each teams rookie cap as determined by the NFL. Those will be official totals but in the meantime you can get the estimates on our draft page, though with a new CBA we cant say if this will remain as accurate this year as in years past or not, though I believe it should be close enough. However this leads to the second confusing aspect of it which deals with the total cap space actually required to sign the draft picks.
The reason for this is because most people will see a big total like $11.8 million for the rookie cap and conclude that a team with $10 million in cap space can not sign their draft class without cuts or contract modifications. What people fail to understand is that during this time of year only the top 51 players have their base salaries count on the salary cap and every team has more than 51 players so each rookie will displace another player’s contract on the roster. Either the old player will have his base salary drop out of the calculation while the new base salary climbs in or the rookie will only have the prorated portion of his contract count on the cap. So the net cap space required to sign rookies is very different from the total rookie cap number.
| Team | Players | Cap Space | Draft Picks | Draft Cost | Net Draft Cost | Cap Space Post Draft |
| Dolphins | 78 | $22,776,722 | 14 | $18,965,331 | $10,425,331 | $12,351,391 |
