For this article, all figures and numbers will be attributed to OverTheCap.com, which has set the salary cap at $225 million in 2023. It should be noted that the official salary cap has not been officially set or publicized. Therefore, the numbers that we break down are theoretical based on the cap point of $225 million, which could or could not be what the 2023 salary cap is actually set to.
The Falcons are projected to have $75.4 million in cap space in 2023 with 39 contracted players, according to OTC on Jan. 11.
(As of Jan. 12, that number dropped to $58.6 million because the contracts of the 18 players who signed reserve/future contracts on Jan. 9 were added to OTC. However, it should be noted that those contracts will be inconsequential to cap space once the Falcons begin signing their top 51 players. OTC calculates the salary cap based on the top 51 players on the roster. With the Falcons only having 39 players under contract, the reserve/future contracts were included. This is why the figures differ from one day to the next, and why the figure we are using in this article differs from what you see on OTC).
When looking at their effective cap space – which is the cap space a team will have after signing at least 51 players and its projected rookie class – that number rounds out to about $61.3 million. The Falcons are projected to carry about $13 million in dead money. This is money used to pay a player who is no longer on the team’s roster, so think Deion Jones, who the Falcons traded to the Browns during the 2022 season. He will carry a $12 million dead money hit into 2023.
The Falcons are currently projected to have the second-most cap space in the league in 2023. Only the Bears are ahead of them, with Chicago holding a whopping $101.5 million in projected, effective cap space.
So, working off of this hypothetical $75.4 million cap space in Atlanta, how could it change from now until the middle of March? A lot of the changes stem from the decision of what to do with Marcus Mariota.
As of Wednesday, Jan. 11, Arthur Smith said that a decision about Mariota’s future in Atlanta has not been made.
Mariota signed a two-year deal with Atlanta worth a total of $18.75 million in March 2022 after the Falcons traded Matt Ryan to Indianapolis. That deal was back loaded, though, with Mariota earning a base salary of $1.75 million in 2022 and $9 million in 2023. Therefore, Mariota’s cap hit in 2023 is quite larger than it was last season. If the Falcons were to…
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