2015 NFL Salary Cap and Franchise Tag values officially set

The league office finally set the 2015 NFL salary cap. This announcement comes just one week before the start of the 2015 league year and the beginning of the free agency period.

Teams were informed today the salary cap will officially be $143.28M, per source.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 2, 2015

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That number is exactly what has been expected for the last few weeks. The NFLPA announced that this is the number they expected based on their own calculations back before the NFL Combine.

Teams now have until March 10th to have their largest 51 contracts add up to under that $143.28 million number. Some teams, like the New Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers are currently over the cap. They must cut players or restructure contracts over the next week to get under the cap.

One of the reasons it is important that the cap is set today is that today is the deadline for teams to place the Franchise Tag on players. Since the tag values are dependent on the cap, the cap must be set in order to know what that cost will be when they place a franchise tag on a player.

Projected tag numbers

QB: $15.5M
RB: $10.9M
WR: $12.8M
TE: $8.3M
OL: $12.9M
DE: $14.7M
DT: $11.1M
LB: $13.1M
CB: $13M
S: $9.6M
P/PK: $4.1M
— Gil Brandt (@Gil_Brandt) March 2, 2015

The tag numbers don’t affect the Seahawks though. They don’t have any pending free agents that are of the type that are worth considering using the tag. The only free agent the Seahawks have that might be a consideration is CB Byron Maxwell, but there is no way he’s worth eating up $13 million in cap space for.

More interesting for Seattle is the players from other teams that are not getting tagged by their teams. Players like Denver TE Julius Thomas, Detroit DT Ndamukong Suh and Philadelphia WR Jeremy Maclin will not receive the franchise tag and will hit the open market next week.

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