NFL Salary Cap Set for 2025 Season, Cincinnati Bengals Have Room to Keep Stars

CINCINNATI — The NFL salary cap is set at $279.2 million for the 2025 NFL season. The league and the NFLPA came to the agreement on Thursday afternoon. That number went up by $24 million. The 2024 NFL salary cap was $255 million.

That means the Bengals have just over $61 million in cap space. They'll clear even more room when they part ways with other veteran players on their roster.

Cincinnati is hoping to sign Ja'Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Trey Hendrickson to long-term contracts. They'll certainly have the space to do it—and plenty of room to add to their roster after keeping their star players.

"We are fortunate. We've got a lot of really good football players, fantastic football players, and we're fortunate to be in a position to where we can fit them all in," Bengals Director of Player Personnel Duke Tobin said earlier this week. "We've managed our cap well, we've got low dead money. We want a high payroll and low dead money so the people that are in Cincinnati playing for us can get all the money. That's what we want. And we're in a position to re-sign these guys, and it's a good position to be in."

Zac Taylor shared a similar sentiment.

"These are champagne problems,"Taylor said with a smile. "We have great players that need to be rewarded at the top, and that's never an easy thing to just snap your fingers and it's done. And so we work through this diligently every single day. Myself, Duke, ownership, we're meeting all the time. We're all in alignment. We all want what's best for our team. We all want what's best for our players. We want them to be happy.”

The Bengals will use the franchise tag on Higgins by March 4 if they don't reach a long-term deal with him between now and the 4 p.m. deadline.

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Published Feb 27, 2025

JAMES RAPIEN

James Rapien is the publisher of Bengals OnSI. He's also the host of the Locked on Bengals podcast and Cincinnati Bengals Talk on YouTube. The Cincinnati native also wrote a book about the history of the Cincinnati Bengals called Enter The Jungle. Prior to joining Bengals On SI, Rapien worked at 700 WLW and ESPN 1530 in Cincinnati

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