The skins have that much because they had almost 40 mill in cap space b4 all that stuff happened and they had the option to eat up to half of it this year which was about 18 mill so take that 18 off the 40(give or take a mill) and you got 22 mill then they spent about 15 on FAs so that leaves em at 7.6 which is why it’s so hard for them to resign Fletcher right now because at his age(37) you would give him a 2-3 year deal not the usual 5 and because he’s still playing at such a high level he deserves a nice chunk o change and with the contracts with less years it’s harder to spread the money out over the years. Since they have to sign either RGIII or Luck plus the other draft picks it’s tough. A lot of other teams loaded up during the non cap year like the Bears with Peppers is just one example. I would have liked to see what would have happened if Mara wasn’t in charge of that committee because if you’re gonna come down on somebody like that you can’t just do it to two of your biggest rivals you have to be fair and either let it go and do it to EVERYBODY who did it including your own team.

Peppers was a new player for Chicago therefore his first contract with Chicago.
Your team took current players and redid their contracts to reduce future cap. Your team cheated. Chicago did not.

LOL. That’s Mayhew hitting the cap space credit card with a vengeance. You guys already have $20M less future cap space than the other NFCN teams

Teams won’t need nearly that much cap room to sign all of their draft picks, because of the Top 51 Rule. When a draftee signs and his cap number is among the team’s 51 highest, he knocks another out of the Top 51, and that player’s base salary no longer counts against the cap. If the draftee’s cap number is not among the team’s 51 highest cap numbers, HIS base salary does not count against the cap. That means that, for each draft pick a team uses, the cap room that it will need to sign all of its rookies will be AT LEAST $390,000 less than its rookie pool. For example, if a team uses eight draft picks and has a rookie pool of $7 million, that team will need no more than $3.88 million in cap room to sign all of its rookies ($7 million minus $390,000 per draft pick used). For some teams, the players knocked out of the Top 51 will have had base salaries of $465,000, so they’d need even less cap room to sign their rookies.

Unless you are the Saints and don’t pick until 3rd round which is why they went big in FA and will likely only need $2-3MM to cover draft picks.

Secondly yes, unused cap space can be rolled over to the following year, teams can do this every year under the new CBA. However, after this season, the new minimum spending limit will be introduced, where team will be required to spend a certain percentage of the cap, to prohibit teams from building up excessive cap space year to year.

Bengals goal for the season? Have more cap room then everyone else.