Cat Scratch Reader
The Carolina Panthers fought valiantly in a playoff game they probably didn’t even deserve to host, but they came up just a bit short of pulling off an all time upset. With the loss, the season came to an end, and you know what that means. It’s the offseason, which for a lot of fans is where the real fun begins.
For a while, we had gotten accustomed to the Panthers starting the offseason near or even above the salary cap even with pending free agents and other roster openings needing to be filled. That was on full display last year, when a Panthers team coming off a 5-12 season somehow only had about $400,000 in unused cap space to roll over. Fortunately, it seems as though the combination of Dan Morgan and Brandt Tillis has done a better job of divvying up the cap space and leaving room to move around. As it stands right now, the Panthers have about $28.5 million in cap space (per Over The Cap), and they’ll be able to roll over another $24 million or so in unused space from the 2025 season. That gives them a little over $50 million to play with this offseason before doing any cleanup of the contracts currently on the books.
The Panthers can create even more space if they feel like they need to. They could restructure the contracts of Derrick Brown, Jaycee Horn, Taylor Moton, and others to add a few tens of millions of dollars more to their cache of funds. Add it all up, and the Panthers could have upwards of $75 million to spend on free agents this spring.
It’s not the most in the NFL by any means. Teams like the Chargers, Titans, and Raiders could potentially have over $100 million to spend. Still, it’s a huge improvement from what we’ve been used to for a lot of the last decade or so. The Panthers won’t need to pinch pennies or make any tough decisions about players to let go. Their options are wide open.
