2015 Salary Cap Expected To Be Between $140M – $143M

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that the NFL has informed teams that the 2015 salary cap is expected to be between $140 million – $143 million.

• Schefter adds that this would be at least $1.5 million higher than the projected figures.

NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith previously mentioned that the cap was likely to be even higher than the earlier projections the NFL management council offered back in December, so it appears as though he was right on.

“The last few years, you have seen various stories reported by some of you in the room … where you have reported things about the salary cap from ownership that has turned out to not be true,” Smith said in the media conference Thursday, via Tom Pelissero of USA Today.

“We believe that that not only misrepresents the economic reality of how the salary cap works, but our concern is that those inaccurate projections may have a negative consequence on some players who are trying to negotiate new contracts.”

In 2014, the cap wound up increasing from $123 million to a record $133 million, which was much higher than the initial projections from the NFL.

“Look, I’m thrilled when the salary cap goes up 10 million dollars,” Smith said. “I’m ecstatic when they’re paying 8.5 (million) of that.”

NFL teams are required to spend 89 percent of the their cap and cash spending has to 95 percent of the salary cap limit, or the difference will go to the union who distributes the money between the players.

“Do we expect (the union projections) to be 100 percent accurate? We’ll do our best,” Smith said. “We’ll provide you with the guidelines and the criteria of how we reached that number. But indeed, we do believe that that is yet one way that we can serve the interest of our players.”

We’ll have more updates regarding the 2015 salary cap as the news is available.