Unpacking the Chargers' significant salary cap space, revealing where the team ranks and the surprising discrepancies in available funds.
I talked about this briefly the other day when I was floating the idea of the Los Angeles Chargers trading for Dallas Cowboys WR George Pickens, but the salary cap situation for Joe Hortiz is interesting and I want to spend some time digging into it a little bit more. That's what we'll be doing today, now that the nonstop rush of free agent signings has stopped for a moment.
For the sake of accuracy, I am going to be comparing figures from both sites that I visit when it comes to contract information, Spotrac and OverTheCap.
Total Cap Space
Spotrac: $52,631,698
OverTheCap: $62,094,614
Why are these two numbers different? Beats me.
Along with the differing numbers is a difference in rank. Spotrac says the Chargers have the 3rd most salary cap space in the NFL, OverTheCap says they have the 2nd most. Either way, the point is the same, the Chargers have a lot more money left to spend.
Active Cap Spending
Spotrac: $247,714,604
OverTheCap: $237,272,494
Based on this number, and the one above, it seems that Spotrac is factoring in about $10M more in spending than OTC. Why? Again, no idea, but we'll roll with it.
The Chargers rank somewhere around 26th (or lower) in terms of active cap spending. The NFL's salary cap for the 2026 season is $301.2M.
Salary Cap Floor
The NFL's salary cap floor works different than it does for other salary capped leagues like the NBA. It is not exactly a hard number and it doesn't really work for individual seasons. Instead, teams must reach 89% of the total salary cap over a designated four-year period.
This year, the "floor" would be $268.068M. Even looking at it under the most favorable conditions, the Chargers would need to spend more than $20M more to get there. However, in the last two seasons the Chargers have been well north of the floor (especially in 2024), so I think they'll probably end up being fine if they don't get all the way there.
That being said, I do think the Chargers have at least $20M more that they will want to spend this offseason. The question is how.
Spend That Money
I'm going to be making some assumptions here. Feel free to argue with me about them in the comments.
First, I am going to assume that the Chargers will not be re-signing any of the following players that were on the roster last season:
- Mekhi Becton
- Najee Harris
- Will Dissly
- Trevor Penning
- Andre James
- Savion Washington
- Tucker Fisk
I could be wrong, that's just my feel. That means that I would not be surprised if the team re-signed these still-unsigned players (with their previous AAV in parenthesis):
- Keenan Allen ($3M)
- Tony Jefferson ($1.2M)
- Hassan Haskins ($1.1M)
- Austin Deculus ($1.0M)
Add all of those up together and you have roughly $6.3M added to the Chargers cap sheet.
Based on where the Chargers are picking in the 2026 NFL Draft, OverTheCap estimates that the team will need $8,729,975 in cap space to pay their rookie class. Let's round up and call it $8.8M.
If the Chargers have more than $20M burning a hole in their pocket and likely plans to spend about $15M, that would seemingly leave at least $5M that the Chargers almost need to spend....plus an additional almost $40M that they could spend before bumping into the salary cap.
If Joe Hortiz really is on a hot seat this season, you would think they he would pull every lever possible to fill out the 2026 Chargers roster and maximize the chances for success. That would, in theory, mean spending as much money on talent as is possible.
The question probably shouldn't be whether or not the Chargers take advantage of their cap space this offseason, but how they end up doing so.