salary cap

i just read a article in the washington times that said the redskins rookie salary cap pool was 4.037mil.
can someone tell me what that means? is it how much the skins have tied up in rookies already?

This is the limit the Redskins are allowed to spend on all of their drafted rookies.
This is a cap with in the main salary cap. So if the redskins only have $3m left on their main overall salary cap, they can not spend the $1.037M diffrence until they cut or restructure some veteran salaries. This is just a clever device the owners created to let the rookies and their agents know this all they are allowed to spend...negotiating tactic.

so as long as their under the overall cap, the most the skins can actually pay out to rookies for this year is 4.037 ? can that number change or is it a pre-determined amount ?

That is correct.
The rookie cap # depends on where in the draft your rookies are drafted. The more higher 1st round picks you have the more you get to spend. The fact that we have two first round picks, we get to spend more money. A team that did not have a 1st round pick or a very low first rounder will have less.

thanks for the info dw.