The salary cap continues to explode, and that could become a problem for the players

Before 1994, the NFL had no salary cap. It also had no salary floor.

Teams could spend as much, or as little, as they wanted on players. With limited (at best) free agency, there was never an arms race among the various franchises for available veterans.

With the 1993 Collective Bargaining Agreement, which settled the antitrust lawsuit filed by the NFL Players Association after the failed 1987 strike, came free agency and a salary cap. It debuted the next year, at a limit of $34.2 million per team.

In the 32 years since then, the cap has mushroomed to $301.2 million per team. In only five years, it has exploded from $182.5 million.

That's an increase of nearly $120 million, a 65-percent leap.

It's good for the players, a direct impact of the much-criticized 2011 labor deal that resolved an offseason lockout and created (roughly) a 50-50 split of revenue between the owners and the players.

Arguably, it's too good. When Commissioner Roger Goodell made a gratuitous pivot during a May 2025 press conference regarding a "lengthy discussion" among owners regarding "the cap system itself, the integrity of that system, how’s it working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining, when that does happen," the message was sent. In the next wave of negotiations, the owners will try to revamp the system.

Revenue sharing works, until the revenue grows to astronomical levels. Plenty of owners are surely looking at the split and asking why they need to keep carving the pie in half.

Whether they'll seek a reduction of the percentage or the introduction of specific cap figures determined years in advance, the owners seem to have realized that 50-50 results in higher player costs than they need to pay.

It may just be a leverage play. An effort to create a false crisis on a point that will be abandoned in a way that will feel like a win for the players.

The prevailing view is that the players will agree to 18 regular-season games and 16 annual international games if the players get enough in return. If "getting enough" means preserving the current formula (or something close to it), that can be couched as a win.

Which could be why the owners are laying the foundation for a trumped-up fight over whether the existing approach leaves them with enough money to otherwise run the overall business.