Guide

The cap, explained

The rules behind every figure on this site, in plain language. Each guide takes a few minutes to read and uses this season's real figures.

  1. Part 1

    How the salary cap works

    The ceiling and the floor, why a cap hit is not a salary, what counts against a club's total, and the summer when every club is allowed to be over.

  2. Part 2

    LTIR is a buffer, not cap space

    What long-term injured reserve does and does not let a club do, how the relief is worked out, and why a club can be over the ceiling and still compliant.

  3. Part 3

    Dead cap: buyouts, retained salary and bonus overage

    How a buyout is priced and spread, what a club may keep of a traded contract, and the charges that stay on the books for players who are no longer on the roster.

How these guides are written

Each guide explains a rule the way the cap sheets apply it, and every dollar figure in them is the same figure the cap sheets use for the current season, so a guide can never say one thing and a team page another. Where the rule comes from the collective bargaining agreement or the 2025 memorandum of understanding, the guide says so.

The guides stop where the site stops. What the site does not model, such as offer sheets and entry-level slides, is listed on the Methodology page rather than explained here.

Guide | Pro Pocket Watch