Updating the Jets' current salary cap position

Let's once again attempt to bring the Jets' cap position up to date.

According to the latest public set of official NFLPA numbers, the Jets have $20.1 million of cap space. However, this doesn't seem to have accounted for all recent transactions.

Since our last cap update, at which point the Jets had just over $25 million of cap space, the following transactions have taken place.

  • The Jets have signed the rest of their draft class to their rookie deals, including first round pick Mekhi Becton. Net cap cost: $4 million.

  • The Bradley McDougald trade took place, which gave the Jets a cap saving for getting Jamal Adams' contract off the books that was almost exactly the same as McDougald's incoming cap hit. Net cap cost: $0.

  • The Jets released Brian Winters, who had a cap number of $6.5 million and no dead money outstanding. Net cap cost $6 million.

  • CJ Mosley's opt-out pushed $7.5 million of his 2020 cap hit into next year. Net cap saving $7 million.

  • Although Quincy Enunwa was already on the PUP list, releasing him accelerated a dead money hit into the 2020 tax year and pushed $3.6 million of dead money into 2021. Net cap cost: $4 million.

Every other move made basically had a negligible salary cap effect.

So, that's two cap saving moves totaling $13 million and two cap-costing moves totaling $8 million. The net additional cap saving increases their total cap space to about $30 million, which aligns with the figures on OverTheCap.com ($30.3 million) and this tweet from a few days ago:

The only question now is why are NFLPA's public numbers so much lower. Our theory is that this will correct itself on August 16th because we suspect that the cap hits for anyone on the Covid-19 reserve list or opting out will be counted in full until that deadline date for procedural reasons linked to the fact that these players still count towards the 90-man roster limit until that date, but not the 80-man limit thereafter.

Alternatively, another possible explanation is that they simply haven't kept up to date with the transaction wire. That seems unlikely but perhaps they are short-staffed due to the pandemic.

Either way, the Jets have $30 million of cap space, most of which is spendable. However, given the current free agent landscape and their relative prospects to contend over the next few seasons, we would expect the Jets to hang on to most, if not all, of this for emergencies and then to roll as much as possible into 2021.