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The Colts have signed most of their draft picks and with the free agency spending spree over, we can get a very good picture of how much cap space the Colts have and how it compares around the league.
The Colts currently have around:
- $183M in top 51 liabilities (their top 51 largest contracts)
- $24M in dead cap space, with 75% of that coming from Matt Ryan
- The NFL salary cap is set at 224.8M and the Colts have an additional 7.3M in rollovers and adjustments
- That means that their current salary cap space figure is around 24-25M.
Big 2024 Free Agents
The 2024 offseason may not seem like a big priority at the moment, but the Colts have three big names hitting free agency and two of the three could see big extensions so having cap space to rollover is important. The following players are considered to be key free agents, with the major ones in bold:
Grover Stewart
Michael Pittman Jr
Jonathan Taylor
Kenny Moore
Taven Bryan
Gardner Minshew
Rigoberto Sanchez
Julian Blackmon
If Stewart could earn a contract worth 15M per year, Pittman earn one worth 17M a year and Taylor earning one at 10M a year, that’s an additional 26.6M in money that needs to go to those guys (their current cap hits add up to around 15.4M). I can tell you from now that the Colts won’t be spending too much money on outside free agents next spring.
Salary Cap Positional Breakdown
*All amounts in 2023 cap dollars and from Spotrac
Quarterbacks
Colts Spending: 4.47M
Percentage of Cap: 1.93%
League Average: 17.4M
League Rank: 29th
Colts will be super low in this category because they spent a small amount on Minshew for a year and Richardson is on a rookie contract. The Colts being so low in this area can be a huge advantage in the next 3 years.
Running Backs
Colts Spending: 9.73M
Percentage of Cap: 4.19%
League Average: 12.3M
League Rank: 13th
The Colts are still low in this area because of Jonathan Taylor’s contract being a rookie one.
Wide Receivers
Colts Spending: 18.06M
Percentage of Cap: 7.78%
League Average: 29M
League Rank: 28th
The Colts are still low in this category because of Pittman, Downs and Pierce’s contracts all being rookie ones.
Tight Ends
Colts Spending: 11.14M
Percentage of Cap: 4.80%
League Average: 11.7M
League Rank: 18th
Mo Alie Cox is the player propping up this market to around the league average. His play needs to improve for him to make his contract be worth it for the Colts.
Offensive Line
Colts Spending: 54.16M
Percentage of Cap: 23.33%
League Average: 44.2M
League Rank: 6th
The Colts have spent a lot of money on the offensive line and they’ll need a big bounce back after a terrible performance in 2022. The unit is paid as one of the best so they will need to play as one of the best for the Colts to receive a good return on an investment, because so far they are getting low returns.
Defensive Line
Colts Spending: 48.93M
Percentage of Cap: 21.08%
League Average: 37.9M
League Rank: 9th
This unit is amongst the 10 highest in the NFL, but unlike the offensive line, this group actually performs and gets great play from their top guys.
Linebackers
Colts Spending: 30.77M
Percentage of Cap: 13.25%
League Average: 25.7
League Rank: 12th
The Colts have thrown around some money on linebackers, mostly with Darius Leonard but also with Zaire Franklin who is looking like tremendous value on a 3.3M a year contract.
Secondary
Colts Spending: 26.31M
Percentage of Cap: 11.34%
League Average: 37.8M
League Rank: 28th
The secondary is filled with a bunch of young players on rookie deals so the overall cap hit will be very low.
Special Teams
Colts Spending: 7.93M
Percentage of Cap: 3.42%
League Average: 6.5M
League Rank: 10th
The Colts spent big money on Gay which is why the group is amongst the highest in the league.
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