The Panthers cap situation prior to the 2024 NFL Draft

With NFL Draft season in full swing, the Carolina Panthers still have some flexibility with the salary cap after Free Agency.

With April underway, it is officially crunch time for NFL teams during the lead up to the NFL Draft. There likely will not be any more massive moves made by the Panthers for the next few weeks, so it’s a great time to take a look at where they stand against the salary cap.

Since our last update, the Carolina Panthers have made a handful of notable moves, the most significant of which being the addition of Edge Jadeveon Clowney on a two year, $20 million deal.

According to Over The Cap, Clowney’s $6 million cap hit in 2024 has brought the Panthers estimated cap room remaining down to about $3.2 million, which is good for the 4th least in the NFL. Due to not having a pick in the first round after including it in the trade package for the right to the select Bryce Young, the cap burden they will need to budget for ahead of time to sign their draft selections is much smaller than most NFL teams. If you are looking for the silver lining in not having the 1st overall pick this year, it would be not having the over $7 million cap hit that comes with it.

Regarding the draft picks the Panthers do have, only the players taken with their current picks in the second and third rounds would have a noticeable impact on the Panthers cap situation. Due to the pre-determined rookie wage scale assigned to each pick in the NFL Draft, players selected during round four and beyond are given a small enough base salary and signing bonus that their cap hit would not be among the top 51 contracts used in determining an NFL team’s total cap burden. In the Panthers’ case, the front office will only need to allocate about $1.6 million to sign draft selections at picks 33, 39, and 65.

Most teams will also elect to reserve some cap space for the regular season that can be used to sign free agents to backfill injured position groups or acquire players via trade. This will usually be a minimum of $5 million, so the Panthers will likely need to make another move to free up some room under the cap prior to the start of the playing season.

Fortunately, the Panthers do have a few options they may choose from. Priority number one should be signing superstar defensive tackle Derrick Brown to an extension, which could create up to $8.43 million according to Over The Cap.

They also still have the ability to restructure some player salaries into signing bonuses that are spread out over the length of their current contracts – effectively reducing their cap burden for 2024 by increasing the cap hit over the rest of the contracted years. Taylor Moton ($8.14 million), Adam Thielen ($4.9 million), Austin Corbett ($3.41 million) and Shy Tuttle ($2.68 million) would all be candidates for potential contract restructure. The listed savings are the max amounts the Panthers could create, but they do have the flexibility to restructure less than that.

It is worth noting that General Manager Dan Morgan spoke about “being smarter” about using restructures to create cap space in a current year by pushing the bonus money into future years.

If they do go down the road of restructuring contracts again, expect it to be done sparingly. Should the Panthers use this mechanism to create cap space but not spend it prior to the end of the 2024-2025 regular season, the surplus cap space will be rolled over to the following year.

While the Panthers may not be flush with excess cash to spend, they do have a reasonable amount leftover for what they need to accomplish in the near-future and several avenues to create more if a situation requires it.