Jaguars released WR Christian Kirk

St. Geezy said

When you have a ton of space, you absolutely must overpay on a bunch of guys to reach minimal thresholds. You are forced to go on a shopping spree of other team’s players, and the available groceries aren’t always up to par.

It also means you’re a bad team so a lot of the big names you may have wanted don’t want to sign with you.

It’s a cycle.

The same stair analogy could be applied to the opposite end of the spectrum by the way, blaming an accounting system for bad football decisions.

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NFL teams don't have to spend 89% of their salary cap. The salary cap floor does not apply to any single season, only to the entire 4 year period. That means that not being in compliance in any single year is not going to be a problem for any team. Only if a team has so chronically underspent that they managed to still be below 89% over the entire four-year period, will they be held accountable.

Even so, there's no additional punishment beyond "spend the extra money." If the team hasn't spent 89% of the salary cap over that period, they'll have to fork over the difference to the NFLPA. That's not ideal, of course, but it's not exactly a huge incentive to just overspend, either.