Falcons spend the least amount of cap space on roster for non-quarterbacks

Jason Fitzgerald is the founder of Over the Cap; he’s a salary cap and contract expert. Recently, Fitzgerald took a look at how much talent teams are surrounding their quarterbacks with in 2021 by seeing how much is being spent per year on the top 20 non-quarterback players of each roster compared to the total expenditure on the quarterback room.

Looking at how much teams spend on the top of their roster for non-quarterbackshttps://t.co/3e6ADwdtfQ pic.twitter.com/zQAFgtFDh2

— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) July 7, 2021

Essentially, readers should read this graph as those in the bottom right quadrant — the Falcons — are relying heavily on rookie talent and/or their quarterback to push them over the top. The Falcons spend the least amount of money on the rest of their roster compared to other teams. There are a few reasons for this.

First and foremost, the Falcons’ salary cap situation is a problem, to say the least. Terry Fontenot shed as much possible cap as he could this offseason by trading or cutting Julio Jones, Ricardo Allen, Allen Bailey, Ito Smith, and others. He then replaced those players with cheap contracts — one-year veteran deals or rookies.

There are about ten or so teams paying their quarterbacks an equal or more amount than the Falcons are paying Matt Ryan. Still, outside of the Steelers, who are also in a similarly disastrous cap situation, Atlanta is spending over $20 million less in cap space on non-quarterback players than the next closest team — the Colts.

Nobody would confuse the rosters of the Colts and the Falcons, though. Chris Ballard is a wizard when it comes to the NFL draft, and he rarely pays good players great money — something the previous Falcons’ regime seemed to love to do. Though the Colts and Falcons similarly allocate funds on each roster, the two franchises are on completely different trajectories. Terry Fontenot is attempting to build the roster into what Ballard has in Indiannapolis.