The 2018 NFL salary cap could be between $174.2 and $178.1 million, per report

As expected, the NFL salary cap will be getting another increase in 2018, though the increase is a bit smaller than expected. Teams received a salary cap projection of $174.2 million to $178.1 million for next year during Tuesday’s league meetings, according to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.

The actual number won’t be known or revealed until the spring, but it represents an increase from this year’s cap figure of $167 million. It was recently pointed out that the San Francisco 49ers’ projected cap space of nearly $116 million would surpass the league salary cap from 2008. The figure has been increasing steadily for the past few years.

There are a lot of people better-educated about cap stuff than I am — I still occasionally struggle with the concept of rolling over the previous year’s cap — but this represents between a five and seven percent increase, which Andrew Brandt notes is less than expected.

Whatever the case, the 49ers have a ton of cap space for 2018. They’re rolling over a lot, and along with the Cleveland Browns, have a lot more spending money than most every team in the league. With a potential Jimmy Garoppolo contract on the horizon plus several big-name free agents with questionable futures in San Francisco, there’s enough money to go around, whether the cap meets its acceleration expectations or not.