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The NFL Salary Cap is set to exceed $132 million, reports ProFootballTalk, strengthening that projected cap number that ESPN's John Clayton had heard over the weekend. How far over $132M it goes remains to be seen, according to Mike Florio's sources, but the rise is apparently supposed to be 'a few million'.
This is huge news for the NFL in general, and a major increase from the originally projected Salary Cap number of $126-$128M. Each increase gives teams a little more wiggle room for retaining and extending their core players and going out into the market to acquire free agents.
This is welcome news for a currently cap-strapped Seahawks organization, who are/were already reportedly taking steps to clear up some space to re-sign Michael Bennett and make the push to retain Golden Tate. While the moves have yet to be announced, it's been reported these past two weeks that Sidney Rice ($7.3M cap savings) and Red Bryant ($5.5M cap savings) are both set to be released, and that Zach Miller ($5M cap savings) and Chris Clemons ($7.5M cap savings) were next in line. It's unclear if these moves will go forward or not at this point, but regardless of this increase in cap, Seattle has a largish group of core players coming down the pike that will need to get paid big money -- Bennett & Tate, plus Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Russell Okung, possibly Doug Baldwin, and Byron Maxwell.
I'll leave in-depth cap implications to Davis Hsu and his next look at the potential breakdown of the Seahawks' roster and salary cap, but for now, it's looking like each team will have a little more spending money in 2014.