NFL sets salary cap at $130 million

According to Adam Schefter, the league-wide salary cap will be set at $130 million, a 5% increase over last year and significantly higher than the $126 million estimate that was most commonly reported during the offseason. While it's "only" a few million, it is a great help to those teams that were pushing the salary cap hard, the Seattle Seahawks included. Per Over The Cap, the Hawks are now $2.8 million under the cap for 2014, which includes an adjustment for our cap rollover.

As our dauntless cap guys have been pointing out for a while now, the Seahawks cap is not nearly as dire as it looks on paper. There is "easy money" to be freed up by cutting players (or re-negotiating their contracts), some more expendable than others. Cutting Sidney Rice, Chris Clemons, Red Bryant and Zach Miller would lead to cap savings of $7.3 million, $7.5 million, $5.5 million and $5 million. If we cut all four (which seems a little unlikely, but possible), that would increase the cap space by $25.3 million, to $28.1 million in total, and also creates significant gains in future cap space (Rice counts for $9 million towards the 2015 cap, Miller and Bryant as $5 million each). Even with extending several players we're unlikely to need that much this year.

Teams do not need to be compliant with the salary cap until March 11, when the top 51 salaries on your roster count towards the cap.

Read Davis Hsu's excellent salary cap projection here, just imagine we have $2 million more than he anticipated.