“Hi Darren! There’s been a lot of discussion regarding salary cap space on your forum and most recently how that money can be spent. It’s my understanding that NFL salary cap money can only be used for player compensation, not for coaches and is defined as a limit on what each team can spend on player salaries and bonuses in a given league year. It covers base salaries, signing bonuses (prorated), roster and workout bonuses, incentives, and pay for players on injured reserve and practice squad. I thought that coaches, executives, and other staff are explicitly excluded from the NFL salary cap rules because their contracts are not part of the CBA with the players, so their pay has no effect on a team’s cap space and is instead just a club business expense. Am I incorrect?”
You are correct. The salary cap — which should not be confused with a team’s actual cash outlay on a year-to-year basis, because they are not the same — is the total amount of all the cap numbers of contracts for that particular year on the roster, including IR guys and practice squad guys. (So yes, having 20-some guys on IR eats up cap space.)
In a very simplistic way to look at a cap number: a player signs a 4-year deal worth $5M, $8M, $10M, $12M with a $30M signing bonus. The bonus is prorated over the four years, so it adds $7.5M to each of the four years. So this player’s cap numbers would be $12.5M in Year 1, $15.5M in Year 2, $17.5M in Year 3, and $19.5M in Year 4.
All other non-player salaries in an organization are not governed by any kind of limiter.