Bear Digest

Official NFL Cap Number Is Out and Here's How It Affects the Bears

The NFL put out an official cap number for the 2026 season on Friday and it is a bit different for the Bears than what earlier projections said.
Gene Chamberlain|
DJ Moore remains a key figure in how the Bears can get their salary cap into position for the start of free agency.
DJ Moore remains a key figure in how the Bears can get their salary cap into position for the start of free agency. | David Banks-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

The league officially revealed its salary cap Friday and it's not the same as earlier figures put out by various website that were largely projections.

It's going to mean the Bears have less money for free agency than originally projected, but not by enough to really hinder anything. The earlier projections said $301 to $305 million for a cap and the actual figure is actually down to the low side of those estimates. It is at $301.2 million according to NFL.com.

What this means for the Bears is they will need to restructure a  little more inexisting contracts to get under the salary cap by the March 11 deadline. By a little more, that means only a few million. They could easily handle this.

The cap itself jumped $22 million from last year and the Bear are now $6.5 million over the salary cap per Overthecap.com. They are one of 10 teams over the cap by Overthecap.com figures.

The Bears' cap figure includes about $900,000 in dead cap, or money they cannot spend because it was prorated bonus money for players no longer with the team. This isn't a problem for the Bears at all, as there are only three teams in the NFL with less dead cap space on their books than the Bears. However, GM Ryan Pole prefers to keep it limited as much as possible, per his comments at the NFL Scouting Combine.

"Like, I can guarantee  you, we've been really good with dead money, at some point that's gonna go up too, (because) that's just the nature of playing this out over a long period of time and having tough decisions to make," Poles said.

One big reduction

The tough decision they seem to have made already is Tremaine Edmunds' departure, either by being cut or traded. He was told he could seek a trade but realistically a player who did not live up to a four-year, $72 million deal is not going to bring back much.

With the new league year and cap deadline approaching March 11, any interested team that didn't want to give up a late Day 3 draft pick would be better off waiting until just before the cap deadline when the Bears have to cut Edmunds to avoid a cap hit. Then that team could negotiate its own contract with him.

Cutting Edmunds alone would get the Bears  under the cap. His contract off the books would bring back $15 million in cap space for the Bears and their dead cap hit would only counter that by $2.4 million.

The other big contract issue is DJ Moore. He has a team-high $28.5 million cap on the heels of a career low for catches and receiving yards.

Cutting Moore before June 1 isn't even possible because of how badly it would hurt their cap. If they designate him for a post-June 1 cut, they sav $1.01 million but would still add $27.485 million in dead cap.

The ideal approach with Moore would be a trade after June 1, but those are tougher to produce because the trade compensation in the form of a draft pick would not be available until 2027.

If they did make a post-June 1 trade, it would save $24.5 million in cap space while creating only $4 million in dead cap.  If the trade was done before June 1, they'd save $16.5 million and eat $12 million dead cap says Overthecap.

The Bears must get busy

"There's a couple guys we've got to make decisions on," Poles said. "You know, if that's trade, release, there's a lot of different options that … or few options that we can go down to create some space.

"But like I said before, this is a unique situation where we've gotten  our roster in a position where we have a lot of talented players, a lot of guys getting paid well, and that puts some constraints on the cap. So we got to make some tough decisions."

Restructuring can result in some of the savings they need. The problem with restructuring Moore's deal is they would be extending a contract that already pays him through age 32. A restructure pushes money against the cap into future years and how far do you go with a player who would be too old to live up to his pay in the future?

Here are the top 10 amounts available to gain back by the Bears through restructuring contracts for the 2026 cap per Overthecap.com.

These numbers do not include what they can gain back in a restructure of Tremaine Edmunds' deal because they apparently are getting his money off the books by trade or by cutting him.

  • WR DJ Moore $16.8 million
  • DE Montez Sweat $9.85 million
  • G Joe Thuney $7.6 million
  • Dayo Odeyingbo $7.4 million
  • CB Jaylon Johnson $6.967 million
  • G Jonah Jackson $6.9 million
  • DT Grady Jarrett $6.6 million
  • CB Kyler Gordon $6.05 million
  • C Drew Dalman $5 million
  • TE Cole Kmet $4.4 million

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.