{"id":705525,"date":"2026-01-26T04:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T04:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/705525\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T04:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T04:24:16","slug":"how-much-dead-cap-is-on-2026-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/705525\/","title":{"rendered":"How much dead cap is on 2026 books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jan. 25, 2026, 8:54 p.m. ET<\/p>\n

While some NFL teams will be weighed down by dead cap charges during the 2026 offseason, the Indianapolis Colts<\/a> do not fall into that category.<\/p>\n

Dead cap is money that still counts against a team’s salary cap, even if that player is no longer on the team.<\/p>\n

Dead money is dollars that have been paid to a player but haven’t yet been accounted for against the salary cap.<\/p>\n

A signing bonus, for example, is paid out to a player right away, but for cap purposes, those charges are spread out over the life of the deal. So if a player ends up elsewhere rather than finishing out the contract, the cap charges from the signing bonus still have to count towards the salary cap — they don’t just disappear.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Over the Cap<\/a>, the Colts have just $2.09 million in dead cap counting against their 2026 salary cap. Compared to the rest of the NFL, only 11 teams have less.<\/p>\n

Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a>AD Mitchell ($1.095M)JuJu Brents ($740,352)Tim Smith ($175,770)<\/p>\n

Overall, the Colts are positioned well salary cap-wise this offseason. Indianapolis has $26.9 million in available space, which ranks as the 13th-most.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this helps set up GM Chris Ballard for another aggressive offseason<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 25, 2026, 8:54 p.m. ET While some NFL teams will be weighed down by dead cap charges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[95878,2005,7,2004,392,2381,6,49915,95900,95882,102623,95903,100724,95896,95888,95895,95897,95883,95881],"class_list":["post-705525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indianapolis-colts","tag-accessfree","tag-colts","tag-football","tag-indianapolis","tag-indianapolis-colts","tag-indianapoliscolts","tag-nfl","tag-sstssportsnflcolts","tag-sstsncolts","tag-tagamerican-football","tag-taghuman-resources","tag-tagindianapolis-colts","tag-tagjulius-brents","tag-tagnational-sports","tag-tagnfl","tag-tagnfl-hub","tag-tagoverall-negative","tag-tagsports-news","tag-typestory"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115959500834952324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}