Success Breeds Success: Cardinals Current Winning Streak Sets Up…
The Cardinals are in a good space as they go into their bye weekend, with a 6-4 record and in first place in the NFC West. But there is another space in which the Cardinals find themselves in extraordinarily solid too — salary cap space for 2025.
As well as the Cardinals have played, it always felt like 2025 was the first key season in the Monti Ossenfort era, and the GM has his balance sheet with an expected $101 million in cap space next offseason, according to overthecap.com. That is the second-most in the league after the Patriots’ $125M, and that’s even with Kyler Murray owning his large second QB contract.
It speaks to Ossenfort’s roster building.
Now, there is nuance to the number. It’s not like the Cardinals have all that space on top of their current roster. They have a number of free-agents-to-be and Ossenfort will have to decide who gets contract extensions, and those will obviously take a bite out of cap space. The Cards have 26 players on the current roster who will be free agents, among them Budda Baker, James Conner, Will Hernandez, Kyzir White, Dennis Gardeck, Evan Brown, L.J. Collier, Roy Lopez and newcomer Baron Browning.
It also doesn’t account for other extensions; tight end Trey McBride, for instance, will be going into the final year of his deal in 2025.
But the flexibility is undeniable. That was the whole plan for Ossenfort when he first arrive, to get the Cardinals into such a position.
