Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images A flurry of early free agency activity surely has fans wondering if the Carolina Panthers have any money left to spend. They do. The Carolina Panthers entered the 2024 offseason with a respectable but unspectacular amount of cap space. They’ve made a few moves to clear more space and structured incoming deals to maximize that space. Even with all of the acquisitions the Panthers have already made, there’s still room for more. Far away the biggest move the Panthers made to clear space was trading Brian Burns to the New York Giants. Burns was a free agent coming into the offseason, but the franchise tag gave him a $24 million cap hit. The Panthers completely offloaded that by trading Burns to the Giants. They cleared out another roughly $5.5 million by releasing Bradley Bozeman and Vonn Bell. The Panthers have maximized the space they have this year by giving out very small base salaries in the first year of each deal they’ve signed. According to Spotrac, the 2024 base salaries for Robert Hunt, Damien Lewis, A’Shawn Robinson, Josey Jewell, and Dane Jackson are all $1.125 million. That makes all of their cap hits for this season relatively small compared to the total valuations of the contracts. We don’t have the specifics on the deals for DJ Wonnum, K’Lavon Chaisson, or Jordan Fuller. Wonnum has a two year deal, so it’s probably backloaded in the second year. Chaisson and Fuller are reportedly getting one year deals, so there can’t be any cap manipulation with those. Without factoring those deals in, Spotrac and Over the Cap have the Panthers with about $18-$19 million in cap space. They have to account for incoming rookies, and they’re current draft slots would account for about $8 million. However, since only the top 51 salaries count against the cap in the offseason, the later round picks won’t factor in to the cap calculations. The Panthers will end up needing a little under $6 million to sign their first few draft picks. Given the total value of Wonnum’s deal is reportedly $12.5 million over the next two seasons, we can make a rough guess of his cap hit. If the Panthers structure his deal like they did Dane Jackson’s two year pact, Wonnum will probably count for about $3 and $4 million against the cap. Factor in the additional ~$6 million for the draft picks, and the Panthers are down to about $9-$10 million under the cap before counting the deals for Chaisson and Fuller. Chaisson and Fuller’s contracts probably aren’t going to eat into that too much. Chaisson hasn’t produced enough to warrant anything more than a prove-it deal and Fuller is a safety, and no one pays safeties in free agency for some reason. Assuming the Panthers don’t give Fuller more than a few million, they probably still have about $4-6 million in cap space left to make one or two more moves. They can sign another significant player for a few years if they structure the deal like they did their other long term contracts. They have or will host guys like Mike Williams, Michael Gallup, Jadeveon Clowney, and Chase Young. They have the means to sign any of those players should they convince one to sign here. Source: https://www.catscratchreader.com/2024/3 ... -situation
