The Miami Dolphins’ aggressive salary cap strategy is going to lead to effective flexibility for years to come. Miami, who has been accustomed to backing up against the salary cap and being forced to restructure contracts in order to defer guaranteed money and manufacture cap space in the past, has a new way of structuring their deals — and it is quite smart. Miami is aggressively front-loading the guaranteed money in their free agent signings to ensure they’re able to pay premium price for players but also to ensure that when 2021 rolls around, Miami will be dealing with lower cap hits for their previous year’s additions to the roster.
So instead of Miami paying big for a player and eating the majority of the cost two years from now, Miami is now eating that cost up front to ensure that the team has as much cap space as possible each season.
How are they doing it? Roster bonuses. Miami is on the books for tens of millions of dollars in 2020 “roster bonuses”, so as long as each players who has one is on the team by a certain date, they’ll be credited their multi-million dollar bonus. Had Miami dropped those bonuses into signing bonuses, the Dolphins would see that money pro-rated over several years.
The Dolphins figure, “we have the space, let’s just spend the guarantees now”.
It’s smart. But will it provide any barriers to any preemptive contract extensions the Dolphins may want to entertain this summer? Players like Davon Godchaux and Raekwon McMillan are entering the final seasons of their respective deals. The good news for Miami is depending on how they choose to structure a potential extension, there should be very little to no restrictions in ironing out new deals. The Dolphins have several other potential free agents looming, but many are restricted free agents that the Dolphins should easily be able to flex roster control on. McMillan and Godchaux are the two prime candidates for extensions — and if the Dolphins really want to iron out a deal, their new cap structure and spending won’t stand in the way.