Denver Broncos: How the rookie class impacts the 2020 salary cap

How does the Denver Broncos rookie class impact the 2020 salary cap?

The Denver Broncos have been busy the past three days in signing their 2020 draft class.  As of this moment, the Broncos have inked 9 of the 10 members of the class, most recently inking Jerry Jeudy to a 4-year deal.  This leaves only second-round pick K.J. Hamler needing to sign his contract.

Every time a player is signed, there is an implication on the salary cap, so let’s take a look at what this means for the Denver Broncos cap space.

The first thing to look at is the year one cap hit for each player. The beautiful thing about signing rookies is they have pre-determined dollar amounts based on their draft slot.  This means that the negotiations are far simpler than a typical free agent signing, with most of the negotiable details being minor ones that the fans don’t care much about.  For the Broncos 10-man draft class of 2020, Spotrac has them to be slotted for approximate cap hits as follows:

• Jerry Jeudy: $2,762,359
• K.J. Hamler: $1,297,660
• Michael Ojemudia: $863,890
• Lloyd Cushenberry: $846,544
• McTelvin Agim: $824,317
• Albert Okwuegbunam: $797,260
• Justin Strnad: $669,443
• Netane Muti: $661,448
• Tyrie Cleveland: $628,872
• Derrek Tuszka: $628,872
• Total: $9,980,665

Simple logic would say that this draft class will cost almost $10 million against the salary cap, but it’s not quite that simple.

Prior to signing any of the rookies, Overthecap.com had the Broncos had a bit over $17 million in cap space.  In reality, this number is really closer to $15.5 million, as only 51 contracts actually count towards the cap this time of year. The reasoning behind that is that teams typically carry 90 players into camp, and can’t possibly carry all of them under the cap, so only the highest 51 cap numbers are counted.

However, once final cut-downs happen, all 53 players on the active roster will count towards the cap, along with all players on IR as well.  As it stands today, the top 53 players would account for $198,248,220, leaving the Broncos with $15,711,230, some of which will be taken up by the rookies.

So back to the rookies’ impact on this — because only the 53 players that make the roster count towards the cap, a number of players that are currently counting towards the cap number won’t end up making the team, being replaced by the rookies.  With that, you cannot simply add the rookies cap numbers to the total, but you have to take the difference between the rookie numbers and the players they will be replacing.

This won’t be a perfect science, as we cannot predict exactly who will and will not be on the active roster week one, but to get a good idea of the impact, we can do a simple exercise of removing the bottom 10 contracts out of the 53, and replacing them with the rookie class.  To do this, lets look at which contracts, and more specifically their cap hits, would be bumped:

• Alexander Johnson: $750,000
• Tim Patrick: $750,000
• Troy Fumagali: $745,451
• Juwann Winfree: $717,776
• Nico Falah: $684,413
• Malik Reed: $680,000
• Jonathan Harris: $675,000
• Calvin Anderson: $675,000
• Andrew Beck: $675,000
• Shakial Taylor: $675,000
• Total: $7,027,640

As you can see above, this isn’t perfect, as players like Alexander Johnson and likely Tim Patrick will be part of the final 53.  But as an imperfect science of predicting final rosters, this example should do just fine as the contracts at the bottom third of a roster won’t have a huge variation either way.

With that said, the best way to predict the cap impact for 2020 is going to be to take the difference between the rookie cap hits and the bottom 10, as the rookies are coming in, the bottom 10 salaries would be going out.  That number would be $2,953,025 that will actually be reduced from the 2020 cap space.

In this example, the Broncos, after signing the entire rookie class, would have approximately $14 million and change left on the cap. Again, this isn’t a perfect science, so don’t quote the exact number, but the expectation is it should be in that general ballpark.

Of that remaining cap space, some of that will be used on in-season signings, but the majority of that will be able to be rolled over into the 2021 cap space, which could be very well needed based on the macroeconomics of the NFL at the current moment.