Which teams are spending the most on salaries in the 24/25 NFL season?

The fourth round of NFL preseason fixtures will be played next weekend, the final on-field preparations ahead of the 2024/25 season.

The salary cap was increased to $255.4 million for the upcoming campaign, a record 13.6% increase on last year’s limit. This has allowed some teams to strengthen significantly over the off-season and has provided additional funds to keep existing players. With data from team contract resource Spotrac, here are the top ten highest active wage bills in the NFL for the 2024/25 season...

To be clear, these totals do not represent the total salary cap hit for each team. Deferred salaries, exempted costs and dead money payments mean that the salary cap hit often occurs outside of the season in which the player receives the money. Teams do this to allow them to build a championship-ready team in the short term, spreading the cost out across future seasons.

What happens if a team exceeds the NFL salary cap?

The league may have implemented a record increase on the salary cap for 2024/25 but that doesn’t mean that it’s going soft on salaries. Any teams who transgress the strict salary cap rules can expect to face a swift punishment from the NFL.

The most common punishment for teams who fail to come in below the salary cap is a fine, typically at least $5 million for each transgression. However penalties can also include the loss of draft picks and the voiding of player contracts. Most dramatically, teams can be hit with a blanket ban on new signings, hamstringing the front office going forward.

Punishments even extend to clerical errors in relation to salary cap accounting. Earlier this year the San Francisco 49ers were stripped of the 2025 fifth round draft pick, and saw their 2024 fourth round pick downgraded by four spots, after accidentally overpaying a player by $75,000.

“It was a clerical error - there was a new system in place,” San Francisco General Manager John Lynch explained. “We own our part. We went through a whole mitigation issue. But the league decided to impose that, so you take your medicine and move on.”