Tom E. Curran • E-mail

Several NFL teams, including the Broncos, Patriots, Redskins, Colts, Panthers and Browns, have shed jobs in the past 12 months. The league itself cut 150 employees.

Meanwhile, the profligate spending and conspicuous consumption that’s come to be a Super Bowl staple was muted earlier this month in Tampa Bay.

The economic downturn has already hit many segments of the NFL. But it hasn’t yet fully visited itself on its most visible employees, the players.

Will that be the case when the 2009 crop of free agents hits the market Thursday night at midnight ET? Will the rampant belt-tightening that’s reached money-lined pockets of NFL owners and lower-level employees who’ve been turned out of their jobs hit the players too? Or will teams continue to lavish tens of millions of dollars on players they believe can take them over the top?

With the NFL’s salary cap projected to be $123 million per team this year (it was just $85 million in 2005, the final year of the last collective bargaining agreement), not many teams will be able to claim they don’t have the cap room to sign big-ticket players. But they may claim they don't have the funds.

“I know it will spill over to the players because owners are screaming about cash flow,” said Ted Sundquist, the Denver Broncos general manager from 2001 to March of 2008. “Dealing with getting under the cap is no longer a big deal. But the cap gap (the amount of money teams have to spend) is getting huge. Teams are $30 or $40 million under the cap and that’s because they simply don’t have enough money to spend it at that level. Some teams are having real problems.”

Adding to the intrigue is that players and owners are going to have to get back to the bargaining table to work out a new CBA. Last year, owners opted out of the one passed in 2006 believing the portion of overall revenue that goes to players was too large. Nearly 60 percent of all incoming money goes to the players.

The rapid rise of the salary cap coupled with the economic downturn has owners turning their pockets inside out and turning up their palms.

“I’ve been very clear that we’re not immune to what’s going on out in the economy,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Jan. 30. “There’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty; uncertainty clearly breeds fear. ... Many of our clubs are having the difficult process of letting go employees. We're doing that at the league level, and it’s incredibly difficult to do. But it is a difficult period of time. There is uncertainty out there, and we have to cut our costs so that we can continue to keep this business a successful business and grow this business at some point.”

But Richard Berthelsen, the interim director of the NFL Players Association, counters that. The day before Goodell spoke, Berthelsen said, “(The) revenue pie has continued to grow and the players see no reason why their slice of that pie should be any smaller in the future.”

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The NFLPA released a study done by two Chicago economists that said NFL franchises turn an average profit of $24.7 million each year.

Goodell’s reaction to that number? “It’s completely inaccurate.”

Financial chaos in the NFL is drawing closer. If no accord between owners and players is reached before next spring, there will be no salary cap in 2010, which could drive player salaries even higher. Three years ago, the specter of an uncapped year caused a delay to the start of free agency until a new CBA could be worked out. There is no delay this time around. And once the uncapped year domino falls, the “work stoppage” domino starts to wobble.

So, with that backdrop, can owners at once say they’re taking a beating at the bank and still pay what’s been the going rate for talent?

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