Matthew Stafford’s contract and all the minutiae of the languages, bonuses and implications of the recent restructuring have led to some confusion and dispute about what the Lions quarterback is being paid and how it impacts the NFL salary cap. It all stems from the uncertainty about the restructure and how the Lions handled the movement of money from salary to bonus.
A recent report from Pro Football Talk casts some doubt upon the actual facts and figures involved in Stafford’s contract for 2020.
Here’s what Pro Football Talk reported over the weekend,
Per a league source with knowledge of the deal, the numbers posted by both contract-information websites ($8.3 million, $21.3 million, and $32 million, respectively) are not correct. Instead, the cash payout is $21.5 million, the cap number is $21.3 million, and the dead-cap money if Stafford were to be traded is $24.8 million.
One of the sites PFT cited, Over The Cap, offered a rebuttal on Monday. It’s a wordy piece that points some fingers, but it states what has been generally accepted across the landscape: Stafford’s contract reworking pushed a lot of the burden from 2020 back into the 2019 salary cap.
Stafford was to earn $21.5 million on his original contract in 2020 and have a $31.5 million cap charge. What the Lions did was guarantee a $6 million roster bonus that is paid early in 2020 (the 5th day of the league year) causing it to prorate starting in 2019. They then converted part of Stafford’s salary into an option bonus which the team does not have to exercise for quite some time (basically the start of the regular season) which prorates starting in 2020. This brought his cap number down to $21.3 million.
But it’s a little more complex than that, too. The part of Stafford’s 2020 contract converted to an option is $7.2 million of his $15 million base salary, per Justin Rogers of the Detroit News. But that money was already guaranteed for 2020 either way, so it doesn’t change any cap hit for the Lions.
It does change the calculus for any team acquiring Stafford in any (nearly impossible and hypothetical) trade, because it means the new team is obligated that additional $7.2 million on their own salary cap, not the Lions’ cap. It’s not “dead money” on the Lions cap any longer, unless they choose it to be by picking up the option before any (hypothetical and extremely unlikely) trade. And picking it up prior to any trade makes absolutely zero sense from a financial standpoint.
What that clarification changes for 2020 is the dead money Detroit would eat by trading Stafford. It drops to $24.8 million instead of $32 million, once again presuming the Lions would not pick up an option that costs them the $7.2 million and then trade Stafford. That appears to be the sticking point of the dispute between Pro Football Talk and Over The Cap.
It’s all almost certainly moot because the Lions are not trading Matthew Stafford.