The New York Giants continued to increase their salary cap space heading into he 2021 season by restructuring another veteran’s contract. This time, it’s Sterling Shepard’s turn at the plate.
The Giants converted $5.985M of WR Sterling Shepard’s base salary into a signing bonus, creating $3.99M in cap space.
Sterling’s cap charges go up by $1.995M in 2022-2023, while New York gets 2021 space.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) September 8, 2021
This comes on the heels of the Logan Ryan restructure on Tuesday and gives the Giants nearly $7 million in available cap space.
The Top 51 cap figures are due on Thursday at noon and the Giants have managed to get themselves not only under the cap but in excellent position to make some more moves.
Shepard is signed through the end of the 2023 season. His cap hits for the next two seasons are $12.495 million and $13.495 million with dead cap hits of $8 million and $4 million.
As the Giants continue to work to stay under the salary cap (I know, how can a team with a 18-46 record over the last four years have cap trouble) they are devising ways to cut costs. One of the devices in place is an automatic conversion of a player’s salary into lump sum cash payments, which is designed to lower the player’s salary cap number for that season.
One note on restructures: The team puts "automatic conversions" in contracts, so the player doesn't have a choice. But it's generally good for the player: Get money in a lump sum rather than spread throughout the season and added future guarantees make it tougher to get cut https://t.co/U8DSipAf5d
— Dan Duggan (@DDuggan21) September 7, 2021
Teams normally don’t like to convert future cap space into bonuses because that means they have to pay up front what they originally agreed to spread out over time. But with the NFL basically printing money in the basement at their Park Avenue offices these days and the Giants now valued at $4.3 billion (a 54% increase over the past five years), they are finally throwing their financial weight around.