2026 Washington salary cap update, part 1: offense

January 20, 2026

by Steve Thomas

Welcome to my annual review of Washington’s salary cap situation.  I usually do this right after the end of Washington’s season, whenever I get around to transitioning our salary cap and roster pages to the next league year.  Well, that annual tradition was this past weekend, and with Washington long out of things, it seems like as good a time as any to go through this for you. Our updated salary cap page can be found here, and our updated roster page can be found here.  In order to spare everyone a really long column, I’m go to break this up into two parts, with offense this week and defense next week.  Let’s dive in.

Summary

Washington currently has 50 players on the offseason roster, including all of their futures signings[1], for a total cap hit of approximately $254M.  The good news is that most of the team’s enormous $25M dead cap hit in 2025 expires at the end of the league year, so they are currently down to just $248K by that measurement.  The NFL has not announced the 2026 base salary cap yet.  However, given that it was at $279.2M in 2025, I have conservatively estimated the 2026 figure at $300M, which is roughly in line with recent increases.  I will update our charts when the exact figure is released.  The team also has approximately $23M in rollover cap space from 2025 and a little more than $3M in a salary cap adjustment.  All of that means that Washington’s salary cap figure for 2026 is going to be in the range of $326M; again, depending on the final base salary cap figure.

This means that Washington currently has around $70M in free cap space for 2026.  This is the sixth-most in the NFL.  The Tennessee Titans are in first place with almost $99M in free space, followed by the Raiders with just under $93M, then the Chargers with $88M, the Jets with more than $81M, and the Raiders with a little under $73M.  The Chiefs are in the worst cap situation, by far, as they are currently over the cap by more than $38M.  Dallas is more than $28M over the cap; again, depending on the final base salary cap.

Although Washington has around $70M in overall free space, they need to project approximately $11.7M in for the rookie salary pool.  Therefore, practically speaking, they have around $59M in space to use.  The team has kept around $20-$25M in cap space free in each of the Adam Peters years, so that means Washington will probably look to spend somewhere in the range of $35-$40M in 2026 cap space in free agency as things currently stand.  With that having been said, there are a couple of cuts the team could make to generate some more space, and I’ll cover that as we go.

Finally, the NFL has an offseason rule called the “Rule of 51”, in which teams are allowed to only count the cap hits of the top 51 players of the maximum of 90 allowed.  This rule is in place in order to allow teams to reach the full 90 player offseason roster without going way over the cap.  This rule will apply to Washington, but it is irrelevant right now since the team only has 50 players.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the specifics of each position group.  As I said above, I’ll cover the offense this week.

Summary of offense

At the moment, Washington has 23 offensive players under contract for 2026 (not counting Nick Bellore, who some list as a fullback, but I count as a linebacker), for a total combined cap hit of just over $131M, which is almost 38.5% of available cap space.

Quarterbacks

Washington only has two quarterbacks on the roster for 2026, Jayden Daniels and Sam Hartman, who account for a combined cap hit of $11.3M, which is just 3.5% of the available space.  Clearly, the team will sign two more quarterbacks for the offseason, if not three.

Offensive line

Washington has 10 offensive lineman signed for next season, for a total cap hit of $72.7M, which is more than 22% of the team’s available space.  Laremy Tunil and Samuel Cosmi have the biggest hits by far, at $24M and $20M, respectively, followed by Tyler Biadasz at $11M.  Nick Allegretti will count for approximately $7.1M.  Everyone else is on fairly minimal contracts, with the largest being Josh Conerly Jr., who is at $3.56 in year two of his rookie deal.  The only real room for improvement here is for the team to extend Tunsil’s contract, during which effort they could likely reduce his 2026 cap hit by around $5-6M, at least, by my estimate.

Tight Ends

Washington currently has 4 tight ends on the roster for 2026, including John Bates, Lawrence Cager, Ben Sinnott, and Colson Yankoff, for a total cap hit of just over $10M, which is 3% of available cap space.  Bates has a cap hit of $5.8M, which seems to me a bit excessive considering his contribution.  However, he also has a pre-June 1 release dead cap hit of more than $7.6M, meaning they’d lose cap space if they cut him with a pre-June 1 designation.  Washington needs a playmaker in this position group (since Sinnott does not appear to be in that category), so expect a free agent or draft pick here that will increase the overall cap hit.

Wide Receivers

The team has 6 receivers on the roster.  Deebo Samuel is not currently under an active contract, but is subject to void years for 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029, which is why you will see him on of salary cap chart, but not our roster chart.  This essentially means that he will count against the team’s salary cap, at least for 2026, unless the team does something to get rid of the void year.  The simplest way to do this is to just re-sign him.  Samuel’s 2026 void year cap hit is about $12M.  If they re-sign him to a new contract, this void year cap hit will be replaced.  Essentially, he’s going to count against the cap regardless of whether he’s actually on the roster, but if they re-sign him, he can be an active, contributing member of the team.  Therefore, look for Washington to most likely bring him back.

Including Samuel’s void year, the receiver group counts for a combined $36.1M cap hit, which is about 7.3% of available cap space.  Terry McLaurin has an $18.35M cap hit in 2026; everyone else have minimal cap hits.

Running backs

This position group is the smallest and simplest.  The team has only one running back under contract for 2026, second-year player Jacory Croskey-Merritt.  He has a cap hit of a little more than $1M, which is just .3% of available cap space.  Clearly, Washington will need to sign and/or draft several running backs to fill out this group.

 

 

 

[1] A player signed under a futures contract is not technically on the team’s roster until the start of the next league year, but is allowed to access the team facility and participate in any team activities until that time.  Teams can only do this with practice squad players, because practice squad contracts expire at the end of the team’s season, not at the end of the league year.