The start of the 2024 NFL regular season has finally arrived, with the Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday Night Football on Thursday evening. Along with the start of the regular season comes the requirement that teams across the league move from the offseason salary cap accounting rules to the regular season cap accounting, which leads to a rapid drop in available cap space for teams.
The reason for this rapid drop is that during the offseason only the 51 largest cap hits are calculated against the salary cap, however, during the regular season all cap hits count.