The NFL salary cap gods just gave Howie Roseman all he needs to win the offseason and win another Super Bowl
The NFL salary cap is going up, giving the Eagles general manager a chance to re-sign Milton Williams and more.
The offseason hasn’t even started, and Howie Roseman is already winning it.
Forget about all of those anti-Eagles conspiracy theories. The NFL just handed the defending Super Bowl champions all the cap room they’ll need to enter next season as the prohibitive favorites to repeat.
As the old saying goes:
Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Give Howie Roseman extra cap room, and he’ll eat for a decade.
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The big news came down on Wednesday, when the NFL informed teams that the 2025 cap will fall between $277.5 million and $281.5 million. That’s well north of what teams were believed to be budgeting for as recently as December, when a report from NFL Network said the cap was expected to fall somewhere in the range of $265 million to $275 million.
Milton Williams, you have an incoming FaceTime call from EAGLES GM.
With the stroke of a league-issued memo, the Eagles found themselves with more than double the cap space they were believed to be operating with. If we assume the final salary cap threshold will fall at the midpoint of the advised range, the Eagles should enter the offseason with about $20 million in cap space, per OverTheCap.
That $20 million figure is only a starting point. As Roseman knows better than anyone, fiscal restraints are fungible in the hands of a capable executive. The Eagles’ current roster offers the potential to create another $15 million or so in cap space via commonly utilized accounting techniques.
The additional cap room is a potential game-changer for a team that needs to sign or replace three critical members of its best-in-the-NFL defense, plus right guard Mekhi Becton. It probably isn’t enough to re-sign all of Williams, Zack Baun and Josh Sweat. Even two out of three is a stretch. But it does improve Roseman’s ability to address those positions in a way that will minimize the chances of a significant drop-off next season.
And it does raise a strong argument that they should make re-signing Williams their top offseason priority.
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What does that mean in real-world terms? It depends on how the market plays out.
Williams is going to get paid. The Eagles should do everything in their power to pay him. At 25 years old, the 2021 third-round pick was an absolute force with five sacks, seven tackles for loss, and 10 quarterback hits while playing roughly half the team’s snaps. The Eagles essentially are at a point where they need to decide what makes more sense: paying Williams the serious starter money he undoubtedly will command on the market or picking up Jordan Davis’ $11.5 million fifth-year option for 2026 with the assumption that he will be Jalen Carter’s long-term running mate.
The big question is whether the rest of the market will inflate Williams’ value to a point where the Eagles must walk away from the table. Remember, every other team is getting extra cap space, too. And there are enough teams with massive cap space that a rival general manager could easily decide to give Williams an offer that the Eagles do not have the wherewithal to match.
Baun is the biggest unknown of them all. Rare is the inside linebacker who spends four seasons as a special-teams player and then becomes a first team All-Pro at the age of 28.
The biggest free-agent contract signed by an inside linebacker over the last two seasons was Tremaine Edmunds’ four-year, $72 million deal in 2023. That contract included a first-year cap hit of $14.7 million and a three-year average cap hit of roughly $18 million. But Edmunds is two years younger than Baun and was a five-year starter when he hit free agency.
At the other end of the spectrum is Patrick Queen, who last year signed with the Steelers for a first-year cap hit of $6.1 million. Queen was a four-year starter and a second team All-Pro at the age of 24.
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Sweat’s value is a little more straightforward. The Eagles can set a hard number they are willing to spend on an edge, and they can spend it on Sweat or a replacement.
Whatever strategy Roseman decides, he’ll at least have the resources he needs to mine the free agent market for value the way he did with Baun or to facilitate a trade for a veteran, which is what he has often done in circumstances like these.
Roseman probably saw Wednesday’s news coming. Nobody in the NFL is better at reading and reacting to the league’s financial tailwinds. He is like that action movie protagonist who shoots his way through a building full of bad guys and then runs out of ammo on the top floor. Except, in Roseman’s case, he needn’t resort to the Brazilian jujitsu moves taught to him years ago by a mysterious stranger he encountered in an oasis town in the Gobi Desert. Nope. Here comes Roger Goodell busting through the door with a fresh clip in each hand and a smirk on his face.
You ain’t gonna get very far shooting blanks, kid. Here, catch.