The last time we saw Denzelle Good take the field was September 13, 2021. He started the season opener at right guard, played 17 snaps and tore his ACL. He was lost for the season and had yet to practice this offseason through OTA’s and minicamp.
Today, Good took the field with his Raiders teammates for the first time since that mid-September day.
Before he did, however, he and the team had some business to take care of.
While Good is the projected starter at right guard, he will have to compete for his job and his contract would have made it complicated should he lose that battle. So, they reworked it.
Good took a more than $2 million paycut, going from a $3.1 million salary down to a $1.035 million deal with $425K in incentives according to ESPN’s Field Yates.
Raiders OL Denzelle Good has agreed to a reworked contract. He was previously due a base salary of $3.09M, which was reduced to $1.035M, with the chance to earn $425K via incentives.
Good is returning from a torn ACL suffered in Week 1 last season.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) July 21, 2022
It’s somewhat unusual for a player to simply take a pay cut, so more than likely there’s a reason he did it.
Good’s previous salary as it was had no guaranteed money — making him a candidate to be a cap casualty should he not win the starting job outright. Or perhaps even if he did, if the gap wasn’t significant.
His new deal is presumably fully guaranteed and you figure the incentives are for playing time, raising his salary to roughly half what he was making on his previous deal.