NFL salary cap officially set for 2016; how much cap space will the Colts have?

Earlier today, the NFL and the NFLPA officially announced the salary cap number for the 2016 season at a record $155.27 million.

Though the individual team cap positions have not yet been announced, we can get a pretty close idea of where the Indianapolis Colts are at cap-wise based on the numbers we do have.  The league salary cap is at $155.27 million, while the NFLPA announced last week that the Colts carried over an extra $4,950,629 in unused cap space from last year.  That puts the team cap number at $160,220,629, which is likely right around where it will wind up being.

Over the Cap keeps track of team contracts and, based on the $155.27 million cap number, has the Colts with just over $25.37 million in salary cap space to work with this offseason.  That's a number that places the team right around the middle of the league in cap space and should give them room to make some of the moves they want to.

A significant portion of that cap space will likely go toward keeping their own, as players such as Jerrell Freeman, Adam Vinatieri, Coby Fleener, Dwayne Allen, and Dwight Lowery are set to become free agents.  Furthermore, the Colts would like to give Andrew Luck a massive contract extension this offseason as well, which would cut into the cap space a bit (though not as much as one might initially think, since his cap number for 2016 is already at just over $16 million).  When you factor in the money that will be needed to sign the Colts' draft class, it's likely that they won't have a ton to work with in veteran free agency.  That's all depending on what re-signings the Colts make, however, as if they don't reach agreements with some of their players they may have more to spend in free agency.  The other scenario the team has is to cut some other veteran players to free up cap space, something they might do with guys like Andre Johnson (which would save $5 million in cap space) and Trent Cole (which would save $6.125 million).