Heading into the 2025 offseason, what does the Indianapolis Colts’ salary cap situation look like?
According to Over the Cap, the Colts have $36.78 million in available cap space at the moment. League-wide, this ranks 17th–nearly right in the middle–of the NFL.
Now, there are a few different ways that the Colts could create additional cap space. One avenue is by releasing an oftentimes veteran player whose cap hit is larger than their dead cap hit, which are dollars that have essentially already been paid to the player but haven’t counted against the salary cap yet, so those dollars remain on the books even if that player is playing elsewhere.
One example of this could be Raekwon Davis. This season, Davis’ cap hit is set to be $8.99 million if on the team. However, with a dead cap hit of just $2.5 million if released, the Colts would create $6.49 million in cap space by releasing him.
Another avenue that the Colts have to create cap room is through a contract restructure. Ideally, this is done when a player has multiple years left on their deal.
There are a few ways that this can be accomplished, but in short, teams will often take a portion of a player’s base salary and convert it to a signing bonus. The benefit of this is that all of a player’s base salary has to hit the current year’s books, whereas with a signing bonus, those cap hit dollars can be prorated over the remaining life of the contract.
For example, if a player has an $8 million base salary with three years left on his contract, $6 million could be converted to a signing bonus. From there, $2 million will stay in the current year, $2 million will go into Year 2 of the contract, and $2 million go into Year 3.
The end result is that this would then lower the current year’s cap hit from $8 million to $4 million, with $4 million going to the two future years.
The last cap saving measure if through a contract extension. This works similarly to a restructure. With new years and money added to the deal, teams will often use this as an opportunity to push a portion of the current year’s cap hit down the road and into those future years.
Free agency, as we know, often isn’t a path that GM Chris Ballard and the Colts explore all that deeply as they prioritize re-signing their own players. However, as I detailed recently, if this team is going to progress, this roster needs more competition and by competition, that doesn’t mean signing every high-priced free agent out there, but there are several position groups where playing time should have to be earned.
Here is a look at who is a part of the Colts’ 2025 free agent class.