It’s your daily reminder that the salary cap is an illusion. That regardless if a team is up against it, they can always find a way to move money around and free up some room. The Raiders went with restructuring Rodney Hudson’s deal not a year after he signed it according to ESPN’s Field Yates.
The Raiders converted $11.6M of C Rodney Hudson's base salary into a fully guaranteed roster bonus, while adding two void years to his deal, creating $9.28M in cap space for 2020. Some extra space for the Raiders during a busy free agency period and with two first round picks.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) April 1, 2020
As is often the case, this deal is great for both sides.
Hudson gets his entire 2020 salary guaranteed in the form of a roster bonus, and gets two years tacked onto his contract that would make him a Raider until 2024. But those two years can be voided.
With Hudson’s cap hit lowered to just $5.2 million, the Raiders free up $9.28 million to spend this year, which they need because they were up against the salary cap as it stood, even before signing their rookie class.
They had $55 million to play with coming into free agency, but they ran through that pretty quickly, signing 12 outside free agents. They would have been about $4 million in the red without the Hudson restructure. Instead they sit at $5.2 million according to overthecap.com. That is just enough to cover the rookie pool.