The Washington Commanders quietly made a move to free up some salary-cap room over the weekend ahead of Week 1.
The Commanders, who had a league-low $524.6K in salary-cap space heading into the regular season, per Over the Cap, created an additional $6 million in cap space by converting left tackle Charles Leno’s into a signing bonus and adding three voidable years to the end.
Washington converted $7.5 million of Leno’s 2023 base salary [$9.25 million] into the bonus, lowering his cap hit for 2023.
What does this mean?
Likely nothing.
We know the Commanders have some key stars they’d like to extend [Montez Sweat and Kamren Curl], but this move was one of many across the league that teams made to gain some breathing room for the upcoming season. NFL teams need enough cap space to sign players when/if they are hit by injuries.
Leno’s cap hit before the restructure was $12.5 million. His cap number for 2023 is now $6.032 million. The Commanders now have over $7 million in cap space for 2023.
The Commanders converted $7.5M of Charles Leno’s base salary this year into a bonus, and tacked on three additional void years to his contract to clear $6M in salary cap room, per source.
— Nicki Jhabvala (@NickiJhabvala) September 12, 2023