NFL Free Agency 2020: Best landing spot for top 20 players
By Phil Watson
With less than a month before the NFL free agency period begins on March 18, what could be the best fits for the 20 top players on the market?
The annual NFL free agency feeding frenzy will officially begin at 4 p.m. ET on March 18, with the period for franchise and transition tags changed two days from Feb. 27 through March 12, according to Tom Pelissero of NFL.com
The tagging period had been originally scheduled to open on Tuesday and run through March 10 before the reported agreement to revise the dates between the NFL and the NFL Players Association.
Because there is no new collective bargaining agreement in place, teams can use both tags this year; ordinarily, teams are limited between using either the franchise tag or the transition tag, but not both.
The owners have ratified their latest proposed CBA, but the players union — originally scheduled to vote on the deal last week — has yet to make a decision.
With NFL free agency on the horizon, Over The Cap projects the Miami Dolphins to have the most available salary cap space at $88.08 million. That is followed by the Indianapolis Colts ($86.16 million), Buffalo Bills ($82.28 million), Tampa Bay Buccaneers ($79.89 million) and Dallas Cowboys ($77.3 million).
However, there are four teams that look to go into this offseason with less than $10 million available under the cap — the New Orleans Saints ($9.32 million), Atlanta Falcons ($4.33 million), Pittsburgh Steelers ($1.58 million) and Minnesota Vikings ($1.38 million) — while the Jacksonville Jaguars are projected to be over the cap by $3.42 million at this point.
And unlike the NBA, there are no Swiss cheese-sized holes teams can jump through to go over the cap to either retain their own free agents or sign others. The cap is the cap in the NFL and it is projected to be at $199 million for the 2020 season.
With all that in mind, what are the best potential destinations for the best players available in 2020 NFL free agency this spring? Let’s take a look at the market.