The NFL’s salary cap is rising again.
The league announced today that the salary cap will rise to somewhere in the neighborhood of $190 million in 2019. The 2018 cap is set at $177.2 million.
“The NFL informed clubs today that the projections for the 2019 salary cap are in the range of $187.0 million to $191.1 million,” the league said in a statement. “This marks a 40% increase in just five years since the 2014 season ($133.0 million) and would be the 6th consecutive year the cap is projected to climb more than $10 million per club year over year. Total projected player costs, including benefits, will be more than $7.3 billion in 2019.”
The first year the NFL had a salary cap, in 1994, it was $34.6 million. That would be about $59 million in today’s dollars. So if the cap had merely kept pace with inflation, it would be less than one-third of what it will be in 2019.