A funny thing happened on NFC wild-card weekend back in mid-January.

Well, funny beyond the Dallas Cowboys bowing out early in the playoffs. Again.

The team that beat Mike McCarthy’s group on the road and did it handily: Green Bay.

Tampa Bay, meanwhile, stomped Philadelphia, 32-9. The Los Angeles Rams lost by a point against Detroit in the Jared Goff vs. Matthew Stafford Bowl.

So what’s funny? The Bucs, Rams, Packers and Eagles — two of three winners and four of seven NFC playoff teams overall — were among the top five teams in the NFL in “dead money” for the 2023 season.

Friendly reminder: Dead money is the salary cap charges sitting on a team’s books for players who are not actually on the team. They’ve been cut or traded, but the structure of their deals leaves money the team has to account for.

Conventional wisdom, of course, is that less dead money is better.

In 2023, several teams bucked convention.

The 2024 leader in this department as the regular season arrives? You guessed it. The Denver Broncos.

So can they follow in the footsteps of those teams and win despite carrying more than $67 million in dead cap space even before cutting the training camp roster down from 90 to 53?

Good news and bad news on that front.

The good: Those four teams that made the playoffs did so with different-looking rosters and overcame their dead cap in various ways.

The bad: It’s not all that common to lead the league or be near it and still put together a winning season.

One common factor: If you have a lot of dead cap, that means you’re likely to fill your roster with cheaper (translation: younger) players.

“You have to build it with young players. You can’t really change that,” longtime NFL front-office executive Michael Lombardi told The Denver Post. “That’s kind of how it is. But more than anything (the Broncos) have a really good coach, and he can coach the quarterback. That helps, really, kind of handle everything. His ability to do that doesn’t count against the cap. He’ll develop the quarterback, and he’s smart and can find ways to win games. It’s not always the most talented roster that wins. It’s the team that plays together.”

The Broncos, of course, are in this position primarily because they cut quarterback Russell Wilson this spring. They had to allocate $85 million in cap charges between 2024 and 2025 and chose to do so in a way that put $53 million on the books this year and the remaining $32 million in 2025.

“Obviously it was a big hit, but we wanted to take it this year,” general manager George Paton said. “We felt like we still had flexibility to do some things and help the team. Feel like we’ve done that. (Vice president for football administration) Rich Hurtado did a really good job. That was the plan.”

Paton noted the four teams that made the playoffs in 2023 and asked, “How did they do it?”

The answer: Quality quarterback play. Jordan Love’s second-half emergence in Green Bay. Baker Mayfield’s steal of a one-year, prove-it deal in Tampa. Matthew Stafford’s continued run in Los Angeles. And a second straight Pro Bowl year from Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia.

“We’re hoping to follow the same model,” Paton said.

Being at the top of the league in dead cap, though, has not been a particularly rosy place for teams to reside.

Before the Bucs made the playoffs a year ago, only two of the previous seven league leaders managed even seven wins, and they averaged 4.1.

Slightly better: All of those seven teams except for the 2020 Carolina Panthers improved by at least four wins the following year and averaged a five-win jump.

“We’re going to be flush with cap room in 2025 and 2026,” Paton said. “So hopefully this team is rising, and then we’re ready to take off. But that’s why we took the hit this year. We knew based on free agency and the strengths of free agency and the draft that we felt like we could still help this football team. Felt like we were able to do that. Time will tell, obviously.”

Denver will have another substantial chunk of dead cap to deal with in 2025, with Wilson’s $32 million as the starting point and then whatever comes this year tacked on. But if the Broncos come out of this fall with a promising season in their pocket, then the coming years could feature plenty of flexibility.

A big part of the deciding factor will be whether Denver looks like it has an answer at quarterback, but they’ll also be exploring all avenues.

“Look, Sean’s experience in New Orleans, they always had cap issues. He’s used to it,” said Lombardi, who spent 2007 with the Broncos and 2013-14 as Cleveland’s general manager. “This might be a little more extreme, but I don’t think it’s a problem. I mean, I know it’s a problem, but I think they can find ways to work around it. There’s other methods to finding players. …

“That’s the most important thing is you’re always looking for ways to improve — practice squad, free agents, guys on the street — you’re constantly working your roster.”

Dead money done right

Broncos dead money by year

A look at how much dead cap space Denver has had since its Super Bowl season in 2015. Mobile users, tap here to see the chart.

NFL dead money rankings

Mobile users, tap here to use the chart.

Source: Spotrac data as of July 29

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Originally Published: August 29, 2024 at 5:45 a.m.