Increased revenue leads to increased spending in the NFL
The Carolina Panthers hired executive vice president of football operations Brandt Tilis away from the Kansas City Chiefs last season to help general manager Dan Morgan work some magic with the NFL’s ever expanding and flexible salary cap. The pair of executives are tasked with building one of the shallowest rosters in the league into something competitive. That job got a little easier this week thanks to a substantially larger than expected salary cap for the 2025 season.
In discussing the Panthers biggest cap hits this offseason, we had pointed out that the Panthers were expected to have about $21M in breathing room before cutting or restructuring anyone. That number is now expected to be somewhere between $26M and $30M.
The expanded space gives the team options. They could easily improve the team over last year’s roster with prudent spending of that much money. They could also perform some creative accounting with existing contracts (what we’ll call the dreaded New Orleans Saints model, when taken to an extreme) and find themselves with over $40M in space.
Their options with that much money are basically limitless. They won’t be in the same boat as the New England Patriots with their $115M or more in space, but they don’t have an entire roster to build either.
The value of this additional space is in the Panthers newfound ability to compete for anybody on the market. Think about guys like Tee Higgins (if he hits the market), Chris Godwin, or Diontae Johnson at wide receiver, or literally any name on this list of top free agent edge defenders.
Yes, other teams will be competing for these guys with more cash, too. But that’s really only for the top guys. The Panthers now have the flexibility to sign one or two clear upgrades at positions of need without breaking the bank. That means they can, if they juggle their money better than other teams, use free agency as a chance to get ahead without sacrificing the bottom of the roster.
This is Tilis and Morgan’s next big chance to prove their quality and establish the future of the Carolina Panthers.