Howie Roseman has his struggles with evaluating talent, but he’s among the NFL’s best at manipulating the salary cap for the Eagles’ benefit.
On Monday, the Eagles announced contract restructures for wide receiver Alshon Jeffery and defensive tackle, Malik Jackson.
According to Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap, Roseman’s salary cap wizardry may have saved the Eagles an extra $12 million in cap space.
The trick the Eagles are attempting to use here is the post June 1 designation but to what I would assume is the maximum extent. Every year the NFL allows you to designate two players as a post June 1 cut which allows you to prevent any future bonus money from accelerating in the current league year.
However there is a caveat and it’s that you have to keep the players cap charge on your roster as is until June 2. So for the Eagles this would be a massive $18.49M for Jeffery and $13.6M for Jackson. That does nothing for the Eagles’ salary cap woes in 2021 since the savings won’t be realized at the start of the league year, forcing them to cut the players in February at dead money charges of $10.5M and $12.6M respectively.
I would imagine that what the Eagles did here was reduce the players’ salaries to the minimum (for the sake of easy math lets just call it $1M) in 2021 and add a 2022 league year salary that is worth somewhere around $20M. To ensure that the player is indeed cut and allowed to be a free agent there would need to be some trigger that occurs such as the 2022 salary completely guarantees on the 2nd day of the 2021 league year, forcing Philadelphia to cut the players.
Their 2021 cap charges in this scenario would reduce from $18.49 and $13.6 million to $6.49M and $4.6M, opening up a massive $21 million in cap space for 2021…
That $12 million won’t technically be available until 2022, and it’s just another ploy to push money back and those looming salary cap ramifications for another year or two.
It’s essentially a short-term solution to a looming long-term problem regardless of the tricks Roseman has up his sleeves.
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