The 49ers lead the NFL in a strange statistic.
They currently have $92 million in dead salary cap space for 2025 -- $21 million more than the team with the second-most dead money, the Seattle Seahawks. And the 49ers have all these salary-cap penalties because they gave bad contracts to players who no longer are on the team. I'm talking Deebo Samuel, Arik Armstead, Javon Hargrave, Leonard Floyd and Charvarius Ward.
So what does this mean for the 49ers?
Dead money is salary cap space that they can't use. The 49ers have to pay a penalty for releasing or trading expensive veterans they no longer wanted. That's a big reason the 49ers currently rank 29th out of 32 teams in active salary cap spending.
Interestingly enough, the 49ers also rank second in the NFL in effective cap space with more than $53 million. Even after trading for Bryce Huff, the 49ers have plenty of cap space to make another significant move either this offseason or during the season if they need to.
And that's good news because the 49ers will need another safety if Ji'Ayir Brown's foot injury lingers into the regular season and Malik Mustapha's ACL recovery takes longer than expected. At the first week of OTAs last week, the 49ers' starting safeties were Richie Grant and Jason Pinnock. Not great.
The Huff trade indicates that the 49ers are serious about contending in 2025, not just building a young team that will be ready to compete in 2026. It will be interesting to see how the 49ers use their remaining cap space. If they use it.