Much discussion takes place each year during the NFL’s free agency period about teams needing to save salary cap space for the upcoming draft class. Under the terms of the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the NFLPA, incoming draft picks have well-defined compensation amounts for their respective draft slots. Therefore, the salary cap hit of each pick can be estimated based on these slots.
However, when computing the effect that a team’s draft class will have on its salary cap space in the short term, one must also keep in mind the Top 51 rule, which states that only the 51 players with the highest cap hits count against the cap prior to the end of training camp.