It's that time of the year. The Superbowl is tomorrow, which means Monday morning is officially the beginning of the NFL off season. Being a Lions fan, this is one of my favorite times of the year. In past years, I would daydream about what the Lions roster would look like if they were to sign player X or trade for player Z, but then I would tell myself to be logical, and to keep my dreams as realistic as possible. However, this offseason has been a little different unfortunately.
With the lockout looming and no one knowing what the salary cap will be, my daydreams can no longer continue. Everytime I think about Nnamdi Asomugha joining the Lions, I have to stop myself and realize that there is no salary cap in place.Well, I can tell you that I am not very happy about that. With no legitimate football on TV, I need my daily fix of daydreaming about free agents to stay alive, so I devised a manner in which I will be able to predict what the cap may be. Read on if you're a Raiders, Lions, Cardinals, or Panthers fan :)
The big issue about the salary cap is that...well there is no salary cap. That doesn't have the same definition this year as it did last year where teams could sign whoever they wanted at whatever price they wanted. This year the "no salary cap" means that no one can sign any free agents until this labor mess is cleaned up. Still, if you're a fan of a suffering fanbase, then you still dream of picking up that one player that will lead your team to the promised land, but how much will that player cost, and will your favorite team be able to afford him once a cap is under place? These are the unsettling questions racing through the minds of probably 2/3 of the NFL fan base by Super bowl weekend.
Like I said above, I have a solution and somewhat of an answer as to what the cap will be in 2011 Basically, it all has to do with a look back at the cap throughout the years and finding trends. Lets start with 2005, when the cap was a measly 88.5 million per team. In 2006, the salary cap jumped to 102.5 million, an almost 14% increase from the year before. This trend of cap increase has followed suite since then.
Between 2006 and 2007, the cap increased about 6% from 102.5 million to 109 million. In 2008, the cap jumped to 116.7 million, which was a 6.6% increase from the year before. Finally, in 2009 the cap reached an NFL high 127 million, an 8% increase from 2008. Of course, last year was an uncapped year, but the overall rate of increase between 2005 and 2009 is about 8.6%. Now, here is somewhat of a logical/debatable claim I am going to make: the salary cap in 2011 (if lockout is avoided) will be at least 8.6% higher than that of 2009, which means the salary cap in 2011 will at least be 137.8 million dollars.
Of course, I am no salary cap expert or even close to it. Chances are that it is quite likely that no free agents get signed in 2011, and that there is no football altogether. However, as a young Lions fan that has only witnessed eight wins in the last three years, I can only hope that I am right, and that the Lions do land Asomugha, Chad Greenway, and a new pair of shoulders for Matthew Stafford.
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