The Falcoholic
The Falcons still have some work to do to get under the increased cap for 2025.
The good news is that the salary cap is increasing going into the 2025 year. The bad news is that the Atlanta Falcons are still over the cap with the projected range ($277.5M to $281.5M).
Sites like OverTheCap were already operating under the assumption of a 272.5M salary cap, so today's news isn't a big surprise, and it doesn’t mean the Falcons are now in a vastly different situation than the one described yesterday in my offseason asset value breakdown.
While Atlanta is still in the red, getting out of it will only take one move compared to multiple, but the team will still have to pull more levers to be active in free agency. OverTheCap is now operating under the assumption of a $279.5M salary cap, under this assumption, Atlanta is over the cap by $4,987,791 and the effective cap (the cap space a team will have after signing at least 51 players and its projected rookie class to its roster) by $8,392,553. Keep in mind these figures could shift north or south by roughly $2M.
This means the previously discussed pre-June 1 David Oneymata cut (8,075,000 in cap savings) would now put Atlanta firmly in the green. Atlanta will still need to examine the contracts of Grady Jarrett, Chris Lindstrom, Darnell Mooney, etc., for free agency relief, but every penny helps.
The other angle is how agents will approach the gain in cap space for teams. Do we see them get more aggressive with their clients' upcoming deals and convince them to go to market and bypass early negotiations, or do they use that situation as a threat to squeeze more money out of a team in those early sessions? The Falcons' biggest internal free agent is Drew Dalman, and his management will undoubtedly be looking at how to maximize this situation for their client, assuming they're good at their jobs.
The road ahead got marginally better today financially, but the Falcons are still in a similar situation overall regarding how they'll need to manage their roster in 2025 and beyond.
