Updated Detroit Lions Salary Cap Post-Free Agency

The Detroit Lions have managed their salary cap in a manner that has provided the front office and coaching staff an opportunity to add the necessary talent needed to improve the roster.

Detroit currently has a total of 69 players under contract. As a reminder, only the top 51 contracts currently count against the cap.

It is expected the eight players drafted this year will count approximately $8 million against the current space available.

Currently, the team has approximately $25.6 million in cap space to allocate toward team spending, according to Spotrac.

This season, the team has used voidable years on contracts for a significant amount of contracts offered to free agents joining the roster.

Voided years are "dummy" years added to end of contracts. A signing bonus is then pro-rated over all the remaining years of a deal, up to five years.

So, the benefit for general managers is that by adding years to a contract, a team can spread out the overall cap hit across more seasons.

Lions' current salary-cap situation

Adjusted NFL salary cap -- $227,209,702
Active Lions contracts -- $204,851,392
Current dead cap -- $10,250,438
2022 rollover -- $2,223,156
Total (all) -- $215,101,30
Total (top 51 contracts) -- $201,661,830
Estimated cap space (all) -- $12,107,829
Estimated cap space available (top 51) -- $25,547,872

Join the AllLions Community

Become a premium AllLions member, which grants you access to all of our premium content and gets you a FREE subscription to Sports Illustrated! Click on the link below for more.

BECOME A MEMBER