At this time a year ago, or at least 14 or so months ago, most prognosticators were probably still comfortable predicting that the 2021 salary cap would be in the vicinity of $210 million, roughly a $10 million increase from the previous year, which had loosely become the norm.
Because of the economic ravages of the pandemic, the salary cap instead dropped, resulting in about a $25 million swing between where it was previously expected to be this year versus where it wound up, and this caused every team in the league to make difficult decisions about who to cut and who to let leave in free agency.