

The increase in the salary cap could aid the Redskins as they deal with prospective free agent Brian Orakpo (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

The NFL officially set the salary cap for the 2014 season at $133 million per team.

The league notified teams Friday of the final cap figure, and the NFL Players Association confirmed it.

It is $10 million more than last season’s salary cap of $123 million per club and $6.7 million more than the original salary-cap projection for the ’14 season of $126.3 million.

The unexpectedly large increase is a welcome development to a team such as the Washington Redskins. The Redskins are facing a decision about whether to use the franchise player tag on linebacker Brian Orakpo by Monday’s deadline and plan to be active in the free agent market that opens March 11.

“It’s huge,” Charley Casserly, the former general manager of the Redskins and Houston Texans, said earlier this week. “It could be one or two players for you. There’s no question it’s very significant. It’s probably even bigger for the teams that are having problems getting under the cap. It really helps them. But it’s meaningful for just about everyone.”

The players receive just less than half of league revenues under the sport’s collective bargaining agreement. But the league and players’ union deliberate annually to calculate the salary cap figure and sometimes make adjustments. There were reports in recent weeks that the cap would reach $130 million or more and it became clear by midweek that the final number would fall around $133 million.

Have a Redskins question? E-mail Mike Jones at mike.jones@washpost.com with the subject line “Mailbag question” for him to answer it in The Mailbag on Tuesdays.

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