Don't get your hopes up if you were waiting for the San Francisco 49ers to make a splashy mid-season move. The team restructured the contracts of tight end George Kittle, tackle Trent Williams, and defensive tackle Arik Armstead ahead of the season and now owns a league-leading $42.6 million in salary-cap space.
The team with the next highest amount of space is the Cleveland Browns with $34.4 million, and then the Arizona Cardinals with $14.2 million, per OverTheCap.com.
The Niners' money is earmarked for the future, though. There are no plans to bolster the already talented roster this season, short of something unexpected happening.
"We've pretty much done what we're going to do this year," general manager John Lynch told NBC Sports Bay Area. "But you never know with the trade deadline and all that."
Lynch and company haven't been afraid to make moves ahead of the trade deadline. Last season, the team made a blockbuster trade, adding running back Christian McCaffrey from the Carolina Panthers. The 49ers went on to win every game he started, 12 in a row, until the streak ended with the NFC Championship Game.
Still, the Niners believe they already own one of the league's best rosters.
The 49ers didn't create the salary-cap space for 2023. As many suspected, the plan was to create a surplus that could be carried over into future years. Any unused cap space from 2023 will be added to 2024, and the Niners will likely need it.
The team locked up defensive end Nick Bosa to a contract extension in the days before the start of the regular season. Next offseason, San Francisco will have to look into doing the same for wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk while keeping its core of star players together.
"Really, we always look at the cap for three years out," Lynch said. "Obviously, we have all that room this year. But really, it's to create room for future years because we roll everything over. It helps us in future years because it creates some room we're going to need."
