Maybe, I'm not explaining myself right, but there's a big difference in having free space this season with the uncertainty and then less space the next 2 years.
We've gone from:
20/21--Not much space
21/22--A lot of space
22/23--A lot of space
to
20/21--A lot of space
21/22--less space than we were planning for
22/23--less space than we were planning for (instead of guys that are on 2 year deals being off the books, they're back on, and we're paying them that rate for, say their age 33 season instead of age 32)
I don't think we have any less space next year. We will have exactly the same cap space next year as we would have had without the opt outs. Let me try it like this. I'll use rounded numbers and we don't yet know the 2021 caps but the principle works the same no matter what numbers you pick.
2020 NFL Salary Cap -- $200 million. Let's stay it stays the same next year.
Before the opt outs, it looked something like this:
2020: Cap $200 million. Expected cap hits: $198 million. Carry over to 2021 -- $2 million.
2021: Cap $200 million. Adjusted cap $202 million ($200 million plus $2 million carry over). Expected cap hits for players on the books: $155 million. Expected cap surplus $47 million.
Now let's take the opt outs and imagine they were set to count $25 million against the cap. Now it looks like this:
2020: Cap $200 million. Expected cap hits: $173 million. Carry over to 2021 -- $27 million.
2021: Cap $200 million. Adjusted cap $227 million ($200 million plus $27 million carry over). Expected cap hits for players on the books: $180 million ($155 million expected plus $25 million for the players who opted out who now have their 2020 contracts added). Expected cap surplus $47 million -- or exactly the same.*
I think you're just not taking the carry over into account. Maybe you are and I'm missing the point. But the point is that while cap charges for next year are going up, the adjusted cap for the team next year goes up by the same amount.
*In actuality, the surplus will be higher because all of the 2021 cap hits that are attributable to incentives will not be counted on the 2021 cap for players that don't play this year.