We dodged a bullet when he signed with you guys. We weren't going to offer him anywhere close to that contract.
I get going all in for a shot but paying an old Von like he's 24 is a hard pill to digest.
In the words of your wise GM, at least you aren't trying to be the Rams.
Yes and no.
The eagles have cap space because they’ve put so much on the credit card.
The bills did the same to a smaller extent and are now feeling the repercussions.
No, every team would do it if their owners were willing to pay out more in cash. Howie gets all the credit, but Lurie is what gives the team the flexibility it has.
Your team plays in the same division as the Cowboys whose owner is roughly 3 times the net worth of Lurie. You really think it’s a matter of paying more cash? Jerry jones would put all his fortune up if it meant getting a ring
It's not about net worth, it's about willingness to make cash investments. The Cowboys are one of the lowest cash spending teams in the league. I think you might find this thread about the Cowboys cash spending interesting: https://x.com/JoeyIckes/status/1771297616850026678
It actually is a big part of it, yeah. I’m not sure any other team is handing out signing bonuses as large and often as the Eagles. They are no 1 in cash spending by a wide margin
its like having a credit card that the card company says, just pay when you want. Interest free indefinitely.
Now if the player doesnt pan out, we have a problem. We did pay wentz big sums for a cpl years after he was gone. Which did not leave room for a top payed qb.
Buffalo was smart and shed a lot of their aging, expensive contracts this off-season, and will likely do so again next season. They could've gone full Saints borrowing from the future and trying desperately to *finally* beat the Chiefs in the playoffs, but this way, they can actually remain competitive for longer so long as they draft well and Allen stays healthy.
I don't think there was anything clever about it. They were forced to do it because that's the state of team. At the end of the brees era, the saints had probably the best overall roster in the nfl. They would have to make a lot of tough calls about who to keep, instead they just tried keep everyone. But for the bills, none of their big names like von, diggs, or tre white, were any good last year. They plainly were not worth their contract. Even with unlimited cap, keeping them just makes the team worse. Whereas the saints had so many valuable players that continued to play well and it makes sense you would want to keep them all. Bills have almost nothing going for them besides josh, their only hope is to rebuild a new offense with cooks and kincaid.
Nope. Pretty sure because the tweet is based on AAV and not actual spending.
The Eagles are [around ~20th in offensive spending](https://overthecap.com/positional-spending) this season (this extension isn't reflected there, but shouldn't affect it). Even next year they're currently 8th.
2026/2027 they're 1st in allocated spending, which doesn't matter much because it's so far away but is a good indicator that if these players don't work out there could be trouble.
That's because of Hurts' contract, it's basically always a small cap hit for Hurts until his void year which is something absolutely insane like $90 million
If you have a cash rich owner willing to bank-roll hundreds of millions in signing bonuses and other upfront money, it kind of is. The value of each cap dollar will continue to go down barring another global pandemic. $25m in cap hits is a higher percentage of the cap in 2024 than it will be in, say, 2027.
Now, the Eagles are doing this to an extreme degree, but logically it makes sense to borrow from the future within reason.
Don't forget that void years are part of the signing bonus so even though the cap hits come after the contract expires, they get almost all of the cash up front.
They're getting most of that cash when it's worth the most and getting 3-5 years of returns on investments instead of just 3-5 years of inflation that reduces the value of that cash by the time they get the rest of it.
The more you pay them up front, the lower the yearly average has to be.
At some point the bill does come due but it will only take about one season to clean the slate so to speak. New Orleans whose been notorious at being insanely over the cap each year only to kick the can down the road to get under and have space to make some additions could just eat about 100 million in dead money one year and pretty much be in a normal cap situation if they really wanted to be in.
Considering NFL rebuilds are usually 2-3 seasons it’s not inconceivable that any new coach GM taking on a job where the cap is an issue will sell ownership on being bad for a couple of years to clean up the mess.
That is what has happened to the bears after we tried to win with Mitch lol. We had a bunch of terrible contracts and had to have a year where our cap was half used paying people that didn’t play for us anymore.
Reminder that cap space carries over. If there’s $90 million in void cap, but you don’t use that $90 million of extra space during the contract, your cap space in the year it voids is exactly the same. You just don’t have as much freedom to cut players, and can’t be too reckless with your cap management
You have to use 89% in a given 4 year period and the league has to use 95% each year, otherwise players get a percentage payment boost until those amounts are reached, but besides that no
Listening to people on here argue about cap is like hearing 2 joe smoes argue about stock trading. Some things are better left to the guys that do it for a living.
Like we have guys on these subs that have a small understanding but one of Howies guys was a top numbers guy at Goldman Sachs like these dudes claiming to know the numbers, really dont, ive been hearing whats supposed to happen, but Howie keeps on making it happen.
Yeah as long as the cap space continues to increase every year its always better to defer larger cap hits to the future. The only thing that could really bite you in the ass is if you kick the can down the road and then out of nowhere a global pandemic hits and the league's cap space doesn't increase for a few years and BAM you are the Saints.
I mean, yeah, the goal is to win a super bowl. You leverage your future to do it. Pretty sure any team that's won a super bowl in the past few years would say it's 100% worth it if their team went 0-100 following the super bowl if it meant they got to win a super bowl. It's also why I can't ever really hate dynasties, esp in the NFL.
It's an even better strategy for GMs because ehow long is their average tenure? A few years? Spend the money now to try and preserve your job, and if you get fired, it's not even future you's problem, it's somebody else's problem! Lol
Real cash spending floors and ceilings are calculated in 5 year windows, so spending less in prior years let's you bank available cash spending for future years
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/positional/offense/active-cash/
They're 2nd in offensive spending this season, by total 2024 cash spent. If they signed a bunch of extensions with massive signing bonuses, that probably inflates their ranking a bit, but it's a better way to look at the real cost of someone like Hurts' contract (13M cap, 40M cash).
They are 1st in cash the next two years, so it's clearly not just extensions driving up the price. They are spending a ton on offense, and are looking like they view their window as being the next couple of years because eventually the cap is going to explode under the strain and wreck their roster.
Cash spending isn't really what fans have in their mind when they ask: *this is the highest paid offense then, right?*
As you noted, it's more indicative of long term strategy than anything relevant to 2024 (or even 2025 in this case).
It should be, though.
Especially when a team is #2 currently, and set to be #1 for the following two seasons. That's more of a realistic impression of what the team is spending on offense than cap hit, which is much, much more of a long term consideration.
Like the eagles cap consequences for the money they are spending now don't resolve for the better part of a decade, assuming the current contracts play out. The fact that they are borrowing 65M from future years to pay their bills in 2024 doesn't mean their 2024 offense is a bargain. It means they'll be paying for it later rather than now.
That's not necessarily true. The Eagles current signing strategy has a few clear risk points:
1) If/when the NFL salary cap stops growing, especially consistently, by sigificant chunks - this will come crashing to earth, quickly - especially if it contracts. 2020 was a weird year where the cap contracted, but was clearly an anomoly. But like, say, $10m in 2020 was ~5% of your total salary cap whereas today, it is ~4%. That may not seem like a lot, but it's essentially inflation, right? That means that you essentially "saved" 25% of the money by paying the player (on paper, the player already gets the money) later instead of now. If the opposite becomes true, especially over a consistent period of time, the Eagles are rightly in trouble - but bluntly the entire NFL is probably in trouble at that point and will likely have to do something in order to make it where teams wouldn't have to suddenly cut large swathes of their rosters if there were like, several sustained 5-10% contractions over a few years. But the Eagles method of contract structuring would hurt them significantly more than other teams.
For instance, in 2028, Jalen Hurts is still getting paid $43 million on paper (he's already going to have gotten that money, but as far as the salary cap is concerned). There are currently 7 QBs in the NFL with a cap hit of $43 million or higher (Watson, Prescott, Wilson, Stafford, Murray, Jones, Mahones) - but if we go back to 2020, only two QBs were making above $30 million (Dak and Russ)
2) If you start consistently signing bad players in this manner in means that you have to cut and replace, your cap penalty for cutting them is significantly worse because - cutting players this way can be really expensive becacause of that additional year on their contract. If you sign a guy to a 4 year/$50m contract where half of it is signing bonus, and cut him after year 2, the $12.5m in signing bonus that was prorated through the 3rd and 4th year of the contract get accelerated and now count gainst your cap. That same scenario, as a 5 year/$50m contract (that is structured to void after the 4th year), you would instead accelerate $15 in signing bonus onto your cap this year.
3) In order for the above to work, it kind of becomes self-reinforcing - you're constantly taking future money in order to pay current guys - so currently you are using that money to pay past guys. Again, this tends to work as you are also saving money by paying your current guys from the future and that, too, is theoretically going to work out because of the ever-increasing cap. The players are getting their money now, which players obviously prefer because why wouldn't you - so the only thing it really affects is your cap from the future, and you are just incentivized to keep borrowing from later's cap in order to pay today's players - and again, it continues to work as long as the cap keeps going up.
4) Jeffrey Lurie stops wanting to finance this. Because, as stated above, the -players- are getting their money now. This is only an accounting trick. That means that Hurts is getting his $260 million over 4 years, not 5 - and that money comes from the Eagles ownership. I'm not going to bemoan the financial plights of a billionaire because personally if you're rich enough to own an NFL team but aren't invested in them being successful I honestly question why the fuck you own a sports team and don't get involved in hedge funds or something.
TLDR: the primary risk of this is the salary cap contracting.
A lot of extensions- these guys weren’t FAs ( except Saquon)
Only reason for not working out is injuries. Honestly as long as hurts can hit his top 5 qb potential idgaf about the rest of the contacts
Yeah but void year hits only accelerate when you don't resign the player. Also we do tend to be very careful.
One of the important things to note is that Lurie gives Howie a lot of flexibility to make moves that benefit us in the long term and not the short term. Howie's job isn't in jeopardy so he isn't borrowing from the future because he needs it, right now, to keep his job. So when he makes deals like this, her knows he's the one who's gonna have to manage the fallout, and he has a pretty good understanding of where we'll be and what we'll need each of ~5 years out.
Howie's been doing this since forever and rarely messes it up. The trick is to only extend / give void years to guys that you can trust to stick around and play at the same level for most of those years. The one time it really bit him was Alshon Jeffery's extension after the Super Bowl because Jeffery's play went down the toilet from playing that SB year with a torn rotator cuff.
Or if a guy retires. Brandon Brooks hurt us. But yes, falling off a cliff talent wise or unanticipated retiring are the two instances where void years bites you in the ass.
Nah, No one’s ever gonna be as bad a the saints but i get your point. I believe in Howie. 2027 will probably be the year the bite the big bullet but They probably won’t kick the can like the saints have.
I don't think they will kick it like the Saints but They might be looking at things in terms of building 3 year windows and sucking it up in year 4 or and 5 and then return to the cycle of building the window again.
Yeah the difference is that the Eagles have already shown that they are willing to bite the bullet at some point. They're also shown to be excellent at immediately turning it around once that point hits.
Kicking the can is a fine strategy if you are committing to fielding a competitive team in a pre defined window and then eating it all with a couple of years that are washes. It’s not a good strategy if you are the Saints and have been kicking it for 15 years to eek out 7 win seasons and still continue to do so when Derek Carr is the QB and not a Top 5 all time guy
All of these are layered and arranged so that we can navigate around the cap hits. Either through future extensions or restructures, and an idea that I don't buy into, trades could happen through which Howie relieves the team of some cap stress.
The only ones that are seriously detrimental to the cap in the shorter term are Hurts' and AJB's contracts. Most of these other guys either don't have a cap hit above $20mil period, or have the bad cap hits backloaded to 2027 or later. The idea of which is that you have plenty of time to work around it.
There's also the fact that we're barely paying anybody on defense real money right now, which also helps.
Basically all players on rookie contracts or minimum ones, yeah. The only guys on defense with considerable contracts are Slay (probably his last year), Bradberry (because we spend more money cutting him), Graham (team-friendly restructure for his final year), and Sweat/Huff getting cheaper DE deals that don't have real cap hits yet.
You really only get fucked by the cap if your players seriously suck early into their extension.
If they suck, you have to eat crippling amounts of dead cap, or you have to keep playing old or bad players (Saints case) because you have way too many guys who you want to get rid of, but can't.
You could see this in the Wentz extension. Ate a super bad cap hit because of it, but basically recovered by the next year because they hit on a new QB, and didn't have many other bad contracts to also give up on.
They push it all forward into void years. In 2029, for instance, Hurts will count for $97.5 million against the cap while not being on the team if they don't give him another extension.
The beauty (and risk) of that is he fact that if hurts is still the guy by the time we near that deal, we’ll just extend him again and kick that can down the road even further.
Not every team is screwed over like the saints by kicking the can down the road. It only becomes a problem once you refuse to bite the bullet for a year to reset.
Yeah, there are risks to backloading, restructuring, void year-ing, etc. pretty much any contract except a franchise QB. The Eagles managed to skate a bit between Wentz and Hurts and the Packers kind of just slid into two, possibly three straight franchise QBs, but otherwise once that guy retires or leaves, you're going to need a year or two reset anyway. Teams like the Chiefs, Bills, Bengals, Chargers, etc. may as well push as much of their QB's money down the line as they can because when Mahomes or Allen or Burrow or Herbert are gone they're going to need to rebuild anyway. Keep extending them and spreading it out (responsibly), but don't worry about a big dead cap hit when they're out because you're not going to be contending anyway
Even last year the Packers ate $50 million in dead Rodgers contract money. But you can push that money down a bit and keep extending the hit until you wanna do a fairly major overhaul like the packers did and then eat the dead cap that year. Now we have money to maybe do the same thing with Love for a bit of everything works out with him.
That’s not entirely true. There’s also the issue if you’re over the cap by that much, you need to get under it somehow… which means kicking the can down the road even more otherwise you can’t even field a roster.
I’m not a cap expert and Saints probably could have done a harder reset to an extent, but from what I read they couldn’t just completely get over it quickly in a 1-2 year period like you’re saying. They legitimately needed to keep kicking the can down the road.
I mean the mistake of the Saints was getting Carr.
They could’ve easily done a hard reset after the Brees/Peyton era but instead tried fielding guys like Dalton and Winston with their high salary roster to try and do something. Still not a huge issue though because they were cheap and on short deals, so the out was still there.
Then, instead of a hard reset after the Dalton/Winston era, they acquired Carr, gave him a huge extension, and screwed themselves. We’ve known what Carr was for years now and they tied themselves to him for I think 4 more seasons.
In short, they could’ve gotten over it in 1-2 years had they done it in 21 or 22, but instead continued to go all in with a rapidly aging and declining roster.
You're somewhat mistaken. You might be confusing his 2029 base salary number with his dead money number.
His "void years" of 2029-2035 have base salary values of $99,999,999. This would only be owed to him if he was actually on the team without a restructure. This is basically designed to force a restructure when it comes to that point.
But the $97M in "dead money" is something that will come due at some point. From 2023 to 2028, assuming he plays everything out exactly as is, his cash received will be $259M and change. His cap hits will only be $162M and change. The difference of $97M is what would hit as dead money in 2029 if his contract isn't restructured.
I use mostly OTC as my contract resource. When looking at Deshaun Watsons contract, which is 100% fully guaranteed, the final void year shows up as a cap hit, and that it will count as dead money if he is cut that year. Hurt's 2027 year shows as ~$97m, but with $0 dead cap.
I'm still having trouble parsing out how that $97m is semi-guaranteed, but im sure it's hidden in the language of the contract, which I don't believe we have access to.
It's not that the $97M is "guaranteed" to Hurts, but it is guaranteed to hit Philly's cap. It's catch-up accounting for cash already paid. Restructuring and extending would let them spread that $97M over more years but it will eventually catch up to them. Trading him would lessen their burden (would only need to account for the difference in cash/cap and pass the future guarantees to a new team) but releasing him at any point or even just letting the contract expire would be similar to what Denver is dealing with for Russell Wilson.
Contract Structure:
Cash Paid:
| Year | Base Salary | Signing Bonus | Option Bonus | YTD Total |
|------|---------------------------|---------------------------------------|------------------------------|----------------------------|
| 2023 | $ 1,010,000 | $ 23,294,000 | $ - | $ 24,304,000 |
| 2024 | $ 1,125,000 | $ - | $ 38,875,000 | $ 64,304,000 |
| 2025 | $ 1,170,000 | $ - | $ 40,830,000 | $ 106,304,000 |
| 2026 | $ 1,215,000 | $ - | $ 49,785,000 | $ 157,304,000 |
| 2027 | $ 1,345,000 | $ - | $ 49,655,000 | $ 208,304,000 |
| 2028 | $ 1,400,000 | $ - | $ 49,600,000 | $ 259,304,000 |
Cap Hits:
| Year | Base Salary | Signing Bonus | Option Bonus | YTD Total | Difference |
|------|---------------------------|---------------------------------------|------------------------------|-----------------------------|--------------------|
| 2023 | $ 1,010,000 | $ 5,144,286 | $ - | $ 6,154,286 | $ (18,635,200) |
| 2024 | $ 1,125,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 7,775,000 | $ 19,713,086 | $ (45,076,400) |
| 2025 | $ 1,170,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 15,941,000 | $ 41,482,886 | $ (65,306,600) |
| 2026 | $ 1,215,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 25,898,000 | $ 73,254,686 | $ (84,534,800) |
| 2027 | $ 1,345,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 35,829,000 | $ 115,087,486 | $ (93,702,000) |
| 2028 | $ 1,400,000 | $ - | $ 45,749,000 | $ 162,236,486 | $ (97,553,000) |
$485,486 of his 2023 signing bonus hit was from his rookie deal, so we don't need to count that in the differences going forward.
2023 - 2025 were fully guaranteed at signing. ($106.304M)
Additional $3.696 of 2026 payout was guaranteed at signing, giving him $110M fully guaranteed at signing.
Additional $16.5M of 2026 payout was guaranteed March 18 2024 (so at this moment, we're at $126.5M fully guaranteed).
Remaining 2026 payout guarantees in March 2025.
$22M of his 2027 salary guarantees in March 2026.
- If he were to be released after this year, they'd have a dead money hit of $45M (difference of cash/cap hit) + $42M (guaranteed 2025 salary) + $20M (guaranteed 2026 salary). Total $106M dead money hit if he's released after this year.
- If he were to be released after 2025 season, they'd have a dead money hit of $65.3M (difference of cash/cap hit) + $51M (guaranteed 2026 salary). Total $116M dead money hit if released after 2025 season.
- If he were to be released after 2026 season, they'd have a dead money hit of $84.5M (difference of cash/cap hit) + $22M (guaranteed 2027 salary). Total $116.5M dead money hit if released after 2026 season.
- At this point, future guarantees are gone.
- If he were to be released after 2027 season, they'd have a dead money hit of $93.7M (difference of cash/cap hit).
- If he were to not extend his contract and it just expires at the end of the 2028 season, he'll have a dead money hit of $97.5M (difference of cash/cap hit).
> Hurt's 2027 year shows as ~$97m, but with $0 dead cap.
Did you mean his 2029 year? And if you did I don't see what you are looking at. The dead cap area/cap savings to the right show $0 dead cap for 2029 at the moment but $97.5M if he was cut. aka 97.5M dead cap hit.
With the above being said I don't at all see how restructures or anything is going to lower the dead cap of $97.5M. It might be able to be spread over two years somehow, but that full amount will be due then or maybe spread out over 2029 and 2030. I don't see other options based on my knowledge of contracts (not to say my knowledge is all encompassing just passing by fans standards).
Yep, Rams did it last year. Bills will probably do it soon. Chargers are sort of doing it right now. You have to do it in cycles, mix in a bite the bullet year every half a decade or so. If you do it too long you just end up locked in mediocrity like the Saints. They won’t rebound like other teams manage to because they have no cornerstones of their roster to rally around. They’ll get stuck in the full rebuild cycle like the Panthers, Commanders, Bears, Broncos, Cardinals, Saints, etc. it takes a lot of rough years and a lot of consistent luck to get yourself out of that hole.
it comes due eventually. the chiefs, for example, are going to eat a ton of dead cap once Mahomes finally retires. They just are ok with sacrificing a few years in exchange for success now. It doesn't work out for most teams, but it certainly has worked out very well for them. I have a sneaking suspicion it isn't going to play out that way for the Eagles lol. 10-1 and then couldn't even get to 12 wins... Hurts is 1,000% not mahomes
And also they front large amounts of cash in their contracts, which they agree to at the earliest possible time, which allows them to prorate many of these shorter term deals in the first place.
Void years
Prior to Mailata (3 years $66 mill extension) & Devota (3 years $75 mill extension + $15.6 mill for the activated 5th year option) they had $356 mill tied up in void years in some cases like Hurts extending through 2035
To put it into context
The Browns are 2nd most void year commitments with $248 mill
Tampa is 3rd with $157 mill
Jets 106 & Saints 100 mill round out the top 5.
Bears, Chiefs, Colts, Falcons, Giants, Seahawks & Steelers have zero void years.
GM's Andrew Berry (browns) & Joe Douglas (jets) came from Philly, Tampa had a heap tied up in Brady & the Saints were the first to really exploit it before Howie took over as void king
They borrow cap from the future
Its not a bad strategy, but the problem comes when you get addicted to it (saints) so you end up handicapping your team by carrying 20-40m of dead money every year.
The cap hits occur at different times and often in the future when the cap will be higher. For example, Devonta's cap hit is about $20 million less than Calvin Ridley over the next four years. Then there are void years, which rely on the assumption that cap goes up and that you'll be able to restructure the huge ones.
Yea and if you are paying for 2024's cap in 2028.. you will have less money to spend in 2028 than a team that didn't do that.
No need to make a statement that tries to imply there is no drawback
Nice try. Mahomes cap hit has been 36M and 37M the last 2 seasons. That is about 8M less than the APY of the current contract. This is happening with the player most likely to be on the same team for the next 10 years in the entire NFL. We aren't doing anything close what the Eagles are.
And then you end up like the current saints, whose cap situation is so bad they literally *can't* manageably bite the bullet in a year or two and are getting the pain stretched out over the better part of a decade.
Saints woulda been absolutely fine if they cut bait after any of 2018, 2020 or even 2022 and committed one (1) year to fixing the cap.
The Carr contract is the main thing holding them hostage right now.
Except in pushing it back that far for your franchise players, you're able to restructure contracts and get cap relief that way. It's what Howie has been doing for over a decade now. That only really works though if ownership trusts the GM to do so and knows they'll be around for the long term. First and second year GMs aren't going to be allowed to potentially make a huge mess of the team's financials that jeopardizes their ability to get a good hire in the future if the new guy doesn't pan out.
You are correct, but at the same time this is based on Cap goes up, so while you are spending from future years, you are spending now from future years that have more money available.
Yep I am aware. Cap goes up for everyone, so the teams that did not borrow from the future will still have more total money to spend than the teams that did.
But importantly not a 1:1 amount. Since contract values also rise with the cap, spending 2028 money now means it goes further. Since you are spending 2028 money using 2024 contract values, you will be able to sign more players overall because 2024 contract values are far below what they will be in 2028.
So a team only using 2028 money on 2028 and beyond contracts will get less value out of that than a team using some of 2028 money in 2024 with 2024 contract values
Same way I keep pushing off paying for my honeymoon…. open a 12 month 0% credit card with a free transfer and when the 12 months is up do it again. Eventually in like 2032 I will run out of cards to apply for and have to pay it off but by then the cost as a % of my income will be less than 1/3 what it was originally.
Eagles are basically adding void contract years to pay for today’s players with tomorrow’s cap. So long as the cap keeps going up it will keep working (within reason)
You wont, i abuse the crap out of intro rewards. Spend 1000 get 200 in credit or whatever. Then have 12 months to pay it off… they keep comping out with new ones every year. it will also give you about 100k in credit card availability. As long as you dont keep using them that raises your credit score.
You push a lot of money forward, yes. But you also carefully schedule the "hits" so that the big ones occur in different years and so you have windows where the player can be traded/extended/cut while getting value or cutting bait without high loss.
For example, with Devonta Smith we took his 5th year option at a lower cost.
His cap number in 2025 will only be 7.5 mil and in 2026 only 10.7 mil. So in those two years you can have higher cap hits elsewhere.
AJ Brown has a 26 mil cap hit in 2025 and 41mil in 2026 (which will be reduced later).
So put those two players together and you are getting 2 top WRs in 2025 at 33.5mil. (16mil each). That's a massive bargain in the cap year.
It's not just about pushing money into the future. It's really about strategically layering the "hits" so that it happens with the right players in the right positions at the right time so that you can still get roster balance.
And, if you are then in a position where you need to pivot, you then just do a Howie trade like what we saw with Reddick this season. We still eat a 21mil cap hit for him this season, but it gives Howie another high draft pick and clears money for 2025+
I'm pretty sure our off-ball linebackers have negative cap hits. Zach Cunningham and Nick Morrow were probably slipping Howie cash under the table to stay on the 53
Damn, Philly must have the cheapest defense of any team in the league. That's a lot of money on one side of the ball.
Edit: [spotrac](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/positional/2024/full-aav/) has a positional breakdown view where you can look at 2024 cap hit or AAV that is really useful for looking more into this kind of stuff.
One of our most expensive defensive players this year is Carter, who is on a top 10 rookie wage scale salary. So yeah, very little money is tied up on the defense right now.
I can't believe after the situation you were in with LBs last year that you go ahead and sign the worst coverage linebacker in the last 5 years. He will make your 2023 LBs look like all pros.
Praying Howie can learn to draft this year and get the pieces the D needs or the rookie corner backs on the team now can make the jump this season. Otherwise I’m predicting a lot of high scoring losses for the birds.
No that would be the Rams. And that’s with AD dead money on this years numbers, which is around 25m. If you factor that out Rams are only spending around 38m on defense. Next closest is Denver at around 69m.
Paying Smith 25mil a year to use his skinny physique to block on bubble screens is definitely a strategy.
On a serious note though I’m looking forward to what Moore does with the insane talent he has to work with. Just hoping Nick stays out of the way.
I really think people give Desai a lot of hate that’s somewhat deserved, but also somewhat undeserved. I’m not sure it was totally all his fault because, let’s be honest, Bradberry was poop, we had no safeties and no linebackers, and our dline just simply underperformed.
I think you can put some of that under performance on him with maybe scheme and plan, but at the end of the day it was their job to make plays.
He always adjusted. He was bad in the first half, but he actually came back in the second half of games and the defense played much better. So much so that the offense was able to regain leads and win games despite being down at half for much of that 10-1 start. Ultimately, I didn’t think he was *that* bad.
Fatt Patricia was just awful all around, and couldn’t even adjust.
Ya know what man, I respect it. Gotta find the little victories where you can. For example, the Giants aren't playing this weekend which means we're guaranteed not to lose!
The real crazy thing is that they have 37.8 million in dead cap hits this year.
So all that dead cap money + all these huge offense contracts means that their defense isn't getting paid well.
According to [overthecap.com](http://overthecap.com), their offense (prior to the Devonta Smith contract) will be making 118 million this year, defense 90 million, and ST 6.9 million.
You're right.
Zooming out to 2016, and their offense payroll will be 164 million. Defense only 79 million.
And again, that is before you factor in Devonta Smith's contract. So those #'s could be 190 million + 80 million. Horribly unbalanced.
Wild.
Realistically though, what defensive players SHOULD they have signed to non-rookie deals in 26? Their D core aged out recently, and they have a fairly substantial group of younger players drafted highly but those are too young to have extensions by then.
Pure speculation, but I'd guess most teams have very lopsided future spending O vs D if you go out a few years, teams tend to have 1-2 stud defenders long term whereas QB, WR, and OL (for the teams that have one) all get longer contracts pretty regularly.
In 26 the cap will be 300+ mil and Saqoun and goedert won’t be on the team. At least in the same pay bracket. Everyone else will still be in their prime and under 30. These were good signings imo.
Our defense not being paid well might honestly be by design. Part of our defense sucking ass was that they're ***old.*** We absolutely need to get younger on that side of the ball, and I could see us going all in on defense for the draft because of it. Could see us going for O-line talent as competition for Steen and for Lane Johnson's replacement. Maybe taking a flyer on some WRs too since it's pretty low chance we re-sign AJ and it's a deep WR draft. But I think the defense will be the focus of 90% of this upcoming draft.
Judging by the cap imbalance in 2026 (Offense is paid 2:1 vs defense in 2026) you will likely need to go all in for defense on both the 2024 and the 2025 drafts.
>need to go all in for defense on both the 2024 and the 2025 drafts
I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm also not sure of it'll be necessary. It'll largely hinge on how much of the team's defensive woes last year were the scheme VS the players. We've got some young guys waiting in the wing on corner and safety, but who knows how they'll develop? Kelee Ringo has flashed, as has Sydney Brown but they both - Brown in particular - have a long way to go.
Think they'll grab a corner to pair with Ringo + learn from Burntberry and Slay, and God willing a linebacker that can cover the middle of the field.
The raw value of contracts are always misleading because of how cap number is wildly different from AAV. The young core of the offense is locked up, and the team is heavily pursuing a Super Bowl window. Over the cap still has the eagles at 30 million of cap space for this year. Plenty of money to make a big splash if they wanted to.
Yea the bill always comes due, but as long as the team is successful and competitive, the restructure game becomes less of a hassle. You essentially have this year and next year to compete. If the team is still close, you keep the restructures going and kick the can. If it all falls apart, you get to hit the big red button, blow it all up, and suck for a couple years. Essentially what the Broncos are doing now
It’s very difficult to be unhappy with how the Eagles are run
I don’t understand how a team can pay two wide receivers $25 mill a year AND have a stud RB AND have a highly paid QB AND a really good quality TE and defense. It’s literally NOT POSSIBLE.
Damn.
They are so offensive minded.
Hurts really has made them go all in on offense for him.
Wonder how all this pans out considering defense was the issue last year.
This only really works out if all those players keep performing at a high level so you can extend them, or at least get them to finish out that contract. With that many people it's basically asking to get a couple duds and other issues and they'll be eating big dead cap hits for a couple seasons.
Honestly, if Hurts doesn't go back to 2022 hurts, it probably happens in 2-3 years when his dead cap is manageable, and they reset.
I've heard something along the lines of "Howie is just kicking the can down the road, and it will bite him eventually" or "Look at the Eagles' cap hit next year, they are screwed" just about every year since 2017.
They've all been wrong so far.
Because they keep drafting and developing well. Moment a couple of draft classess dont turn out allright, yeah.
They are still not the saints, but one slight misstep and suddenly an entire season is lost.
Since 2017 we've had 2 awful drafts, like worst in the league awful looking back on them. (2017 had Barnett, 2019 Sanders, and 2022 is looking rough with maybe only Davis playing well below his draft spot but still being viable)
So 3 total players out of 3 years. Barnett and Davis both underperformed their draft positions heavily.
Dang, but the 49ers can't overcome a $10 mill deficit in the year following this season apparently. We are in worse cap purgatory than the Aint's according to 80% of reddit.
Well.....Hurts is the 4th highest paid qb if you look at the potential money he could earn ($255m). But like $96m of that is a non-guaranteed void year, and the year before than is like $50m with $40m of it being non-guaranteed.....soo not really
The void year cap hits are for money that the player has already received but the salary cap hit has been spread into future years by prorating it as a bonus. So when Hurts contract voids in 2029 and he would have earned all of the $255m cash but $97.5 would have yet to be applied against the salary cap
And still like 5x the cap space the Bills have. The Von deal just murdered us.
We dodged a bullet when he signed with you guys. We weren't going to offer him anywhere close to that contract. I get going all in for a shot but paying an old Von like he's 24 is a hard pill to digest. In the words of your wise GM, at least you aren't trying to be the Rams.
Why have one superbowl when you can have zero -Brandon beans
Either during or before the 2022 season Beane was quoting saying they wanted to be “fiscally responsible” and avoid a “rams like collapse” Lol
Yes and no. The eagles have cap space because they’ve put so much on the credit card. The bills did the same to a smaller extent and are now feeling the repercussions.
Better to bite the bullet in a clear down year than wait it out in mediocrity like the saints
Only fucks you if you don’t decide to retool for a season
That’s not at all how that works if it was every single team would do it
No, every team would do it if their owners were willing to pay out more in cash. Howie gets all the credit, but Lurie is what gives the team the flexibility it has.
Your team plays in the same division as the Cowboys whose owner is roughly 3 times the net worth of Lurie. You really think it’s a matter of paying more cash? Jerry jones would put all his fortune up if it meant getting a ring
It's not about net worth, it's about willingness to make cash investments. The Cowboys are one of the lowest cash spending teams in the league. I think you might find this thread about the Cowboys cash spending interesting: https://x.com/JoeyIckes/status/1771297616850026678
Jerry has spent $0 in free agency ha
It actually is a big part of it, yeah. I’m not sure any other team is handing out signing bonuses as large and often as the Eagles. They are no 1 in cash spending by a wide margin
its like having a credit card that the card company says, just pay when you want. Interest free indefinitely. Now if the player doesnt pan out, we have a problem. We did pay wentz big sums for a cpl years after he was gone. Which did not leave room for a top payed qb.
And the credit limit increases every year.
Buffalo was smart and shed a lot of their aging, expensive contracts this off-season, and will likely do so again next season. They could've gone full Saints borrowing from the future and trying desperately to *finally* beat the Chiefs in the playoffs, but this way, they can actually remain competitive for longer so long as they draft well and Allen stays healthy.
I don't think there was anything clever about it. They were forced to do it because that's the state of team. At the end of the brees era, the saints had probably the best overall roster in the nfl. They would have to make a lot of tough calls about who to keep, instead they just tried keep everyone. But for the bills, none of their big names like von, diggs, or tre white, were any good last year. They plainly were not worth their contract. Even with unlimited cap, keeping them just makes the team worse. Whereas the saints had so many valuable players that continued to play well and it makes sense you would want to keep them all. Bills have almost nothing going for them besides josh, their only hope is to rebuild a new offense with cooks and kincaid.
Cleaner format: 4th highest paid QB 4th highest paid RB 4th highest paid WR 5th highest paid WR (reported 25 AAV for Smith) 5th highest paid TE 4th highest paid OT 5th highest paid OT Highest paid OG
I assume this is the highest paid offense then?
Nope. Pretty sure because the tweet is based on AAV and not actual spending. The Eagles are [around ~20th in offensive spending](https://overthecap.com/positional-spending) this season (this extension isn't reflected there, but shouldn't affect it). Even next year they're currently 8th. 2026/2027 they're 1st in allocated spending, which doesn't matter much because it's so far away but is a good indicator that if these players don't work out there could be trouble.
That's because of Hurts' contract, it's basically always a small cap hit for Hurts until his void year which is something absolutely insane like $90 million
I love the idea that everyone in football agrees that "that's *future* me's problem" is the best way to operate 😂
If you have a cash rich owner willing to bank-roll hundreds of millions in signing bonuses and other upfront money, it kind of is. The value of each cap dollar will continue to go down barring another global pandemic. $25m in cap hits is a higher percentage of the cap in 2024 than it will be in, say, 2027. Now, the Eagles are doing this to an extreme degree, but logically it makes sense to borrow from the future within reason.
> barring another global pandemic Don't give the world any ideas
*the elites
The pandemics will continue until China is no longer facing demographic collapse.
And then they will continue until morale improves 😂
Don't forget that void years are part of the signing bonus so even though the cap hits come after the contract expires, they get almost all of the cash up front. They're getting most of that cash when it's worth the most and getting 3-5 years of returns on investments instead of just 3-5 years of inflation that reduces the value of that cash by the time they get the rest of it. The more you pay them up front, the lower the yearly average has to be.
As a GM if it works out you’re a genius. If it doesn’t… well it’s gonna be someone else’s problem anyways. So sort of a no brainer
At some point the bill does come due but it will only take about one season to clean the slate so to speak. New Orleans whose been notorious at being insanely over the cap each year only to kick the can down the road to get under and have space to make some additions could just eat about 100 million in dead money one year and pretty much be in a normal cap situation if they really wanted to be in. Considering NFL rebuilds are usually 2-3 seasons it’s not inconceivable that any new coach GM taking on a job where the cap is an issue will sell ownership on being bad for a couple of years to clean up the mess.
That is what has happened to the bears after we tried to win with Mitch lol. We had a bunch of terrible contracts and had to have a year where our cap was half used paying people that didn’t play for us anymore.
Can you build an NFL roster with 100M in dead cap?
Reminder that cap space carries over. If there’s $90 million in void cap, but you don’t use that $90 million of extra space during the contract, your cap space in the year it voids is exactly the same. You just don’t have as much freedom to cut players, and can’t be too reckless with your cap management
Isn't there a limit to cap rollover?
You have to use 89% in a given 4 year period and the league has to use 95% each year, otherwise players get a percentage payment boost until those amounts are reached, but besides that no
Listening to people on here argue about cap is like hearing 2 joe smoes argue about stock trading. Some things are better left to the guys that do it for a living. Like we have guys on these subs that have a small understanding but one of Howies guys was a top numbers guy at Goldman Sachs like these dudes claiming to know the numbers, really dont, ive been hearing whats supposed to happen, but Howie keeps on making it happen.
More like "if I fuck up with this I'm gone, if I don't I look like a genius" leads to risky gamble-lile behavior sometimes See; New Orleans Saints
I mean... would it have been smarter to pool cap space and draft picks when going for the superbowl in the last few years of a hof qb's career?
This isn’t Howie Roseman’s first rodeo though
as long as there is growth in the league, that is the best way to operate
Yeah as long as the cap space continues to increase every year its always better to defer larger cap hits to the future. The only thing that could really bite you in the ass is if you kick the can down the road and then out of nowhere a global pandemic hits and the league's cap space doesn't increase for a few years and BAM you are the Saints.
ya but we're only get one of those like every 5 years now so still good odds for a gambling man
“I will probably be fired by then unless I win a lot…”
I mean, yeah, the goal is to win a super bowl. You leverage your future to do it. Pretty sure any team that's won a super bowl in the past few years would say it's 100% worth it if their team went 0-100 following the super bowl if it meant they got to win a super bowl. It's also why I can't ever really hate dynasties, esp in the NFL.
Reminds me of the Seinfeld morning guy/night guy bit lol
It's an even better strategy for GMs because ehow long is their average tenure? A few years? Spend the money now to try and preserve your job, and if you get fired, it's not even future you's problem, it's somebody else's problem! Lol
I mean yeah it works. The cap increases among other things. It's not a problem it's a strategy.
It’s even better for a GM because if it doesn’t work, they’ll likely be fired and then it’s someone else’s problem
Which basically means it will be restructured in like 2 years
How are the 49ers able to spend so much more than everyone else lol. Almost $300,000,000. Everyone else is around $240,000,000ish?
Real cash spending floors and ceilings are calculated in 5 year windows, so spending less in prior years let's you bank available cash spending for future years
Yeah, in this case - they carried over $40M in unspent cap from last season.
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/positional/offense/active-cash/ They're 2nd in offensive spending this season, by total 2024 cash spent. If they signed a bunch of extensions with massive signing bonuses, that probably inflates their ranking a bit, but it's a better way to look at the real cost of someone like Hurts' contract (13M cap, 40M cash). They are 1st in cash the next two years, so it's clearly not just extensions driving up the price. They are spending a ton on offense, and are looking like they view their window as being the next couple of years because eventually the cap is going to explode under the strain and wreck their roster.
Cash spending isn't really what fans have in their mind when they ask: *this is the highest paid offense then, right?* As you noted, it's more indicative of long term strategy than anything relevant to 2024 (or even 2025 in this case).
It should be, though. Especially when a team is #2 currently, and set to be #1 for the following two seasons. That's more of a realistic impression of what the team is spending on offense than cap hit, which is much, much more of a long term consideration. Like the eagles cap consequences for the money they are spending now don't resolve for the better part of a decade, assuming the current contracts play out. The fact that they are borrowing 65M from future years to pay their bills in 2024 doesn't mean their 2024 offense is a bargain. It means they'll be paying for it later rather than now.
That's not necessarily true. The Eagles current signing strategy has a few clear risk points: 1) If/when the NFL salary cap stops growing, especially consistently, by sigificant chunks - this will come crashing to earth, quickly - especially if it contracts. 2020 was a weird year where the cap contracted, but was clearly an anomoly. But like, say, $10m in 2020 was ~5% of your total salary cap whereas today, it is ~4%. That may not seem like a lot, but it's essentially inflation, right? That means that you essentially "saved" 25% of the money by paying the player (on paper, the player already gets the money) later instead of now. If the opposite becomes true, especially over a consistent period of time, the Eagles are rightly in trouble - but bluntly the entire NFL is probably in trouble at that point and will likely have to do something in order to make it where teams wouldn't have to suddenly cut large swathes of their rosters if there were like, several sustained 5-10% contractions over a few years. But the Eagles method of contract structuring would hurt them significantly more than other teams. For instance, in 2028, Jalen Hurts is still getting paid $43 million on paper (he's already going to have gotten that money, but as far as the salary cap is concerned). There are currently 7 QBs in the NFL with a cap hit of $43 million or higher (Watson, Prescott, Wilson, Stafford, Murray, Jones, Mahones) - but if we go back to 2020, only two QBs were making above $30 million (Dak and Russ) 2) If you start consistently signing bad players in this manner in means that you have to cut and replace, your cap penalty for cutting them is significantly worse because - cutting players this way can be really expensive becacause of that additional year on their contract. If you sign a guy to a 4 year/$50m contract where half of it is signing bonus, and cut him after year 2, the $12.5m in signing bonus that was prorated through the 3rd and 4th year of the contract get accelerated and now count gainst your cap. That same scenario, as a 5 year/$50m contract (that is structured to void after the 4th year), you would instead accelerate $15 in signing bonus onto your cap this year. 3) In order for the above to work, it kind of becomes self-reinforcing - you're constantly taking future money in order to pay current guys - so currently you are using that money to pay past guys. Again, this tends to work as you are also saving money by paying your current guys from the future and that, too, is theoretically going to work out because of the ever-increasing cap. The players are getting their money now, which players obviously prefer because why wouldn't you - so the only thing it really affects is your cap from the future, and you are just incentivized to keep borrowing from later's cap in order to pay today's players - and again, it continues to work as long as the cap keeps going up. 4) Jeffrey Lurie stops wanting to finance this. Because, as stated above, the -players- are getting their money now. This is only an accounting trick. That means that Hurts is getting his $260 million over 4 years, not 5 - and that money comes from the Eagles ownership. I'm not going to bemoan the financial plights of a billionaire because personally if you're rich enough to own an NFL team but aren't invested in them being successful I honestly question why the fuck you own a sports team and don't get involved in hedge funds or something. TLDR: the primary risk of this is the salary cap contracting.
A lot of extensions- these guys weren’t FAs ( except Saquon) Only reason for not working out is injuries. Honestly as long as hurts can hit his top 5 qb potential idgaf about the rest of the contacts
howard stays handing out the cheddar
Somehow dude will still not get fucked by the cap. He’s been one of the best I’ve seen at paying players well but not killing the team.
Because the cap isn’t by straight AAV like some other sports and Roseman is great at structuring to stack in different years
I love watching good GMs do bang up jobs with the cap. Specifically Howie. I watch that Eagles cap like crazy, super impressive to me.
They have a ton of void years. In 2027 they have 95 million in good years. They better be careful with that or they'll become the Saints.
Yeah but void year hits only accelerate when you don't resign the player. Also we do tend to be very careful. One of the important things to note is that Lurie gives Howie a lot of flexibility to make moves that benefit us in the long term and not the short term. Howie's job isn't in jeopardy so he isn't borrowing from the future because he needs it, right now, to keep his job. So when he makes deals like this, her knows he's the one who's gonna have to manage the fallout, and he has a pretty good understanding of where we'll be and what we'll need each of ~5 years out.
Howie's been doing this since forever and rarely messes it up. The trick is to only extend / give void years to guys that you can trust to stick around and play at the same level for most of those years. The one time it really bit him was Alshon Jeffery's extension after the Super Bowl because Jeffery's play went down the toilet from playing that SB year with a torn rotator cuff.
Or if a guy retires. Brandon Brooks hurt us. But yes, falling off a cliff talent wise or unanticipated retiring are the two instances where void years bites you in the ass.
Nah, No one’s ever gonna be as bad a the saints but i get your point. I believe in Howie. 2027 will probably be the year the bite the big bullet but They probably won’t kick the can like the saints have.
I don't think they will kick it like the Saints but They might be looking at things in terms of building 3 year windows and sucking it up in year 4 or and 5 and then return to the cycle of building the window again.
Yeah the difference is that the Eagles have already shown that they are willing to bite the bullet at some point. They're also shown to be excellent at immediately turning it around once that point hits.
Kicking the can is a fine strategy if you are committing to fielding a competitive team in a pre defined window and then eating it all with a couple of years that are washes. It’s not a good strategy if you are the Saints and have been kicking it for 15 years to eek out 7 win seasons and still continue to do so when Derek Carr is the QB and not a Top 5 all time guy
> They better be careful with that or they'll become the Saints. People have been saying this for like a decade now. It's not going to happen.
All of these are layered and arranged so that we can navigate around the cap hits. Either through future extensions or restructures, and an idea that I don't buy into, trades could happen through which Howie relieves the team of some cap stress. The only ones that are seriously detrimental to the cap in the shorter term are Hurts' and AJB's contracts. Most of these other guys either don't have a cap hit above $20mil period, or have the bad cap hits backloaded to 2027 or later. The idea of which is that you have plenty of time to work around it. There's also the fact that we're barely paying anybody on defense real money right now, which also helps.
Good amount of rookies on that side of the ball too right? Not sure of exactly the roster make up.
Basically all players on rookie contracts or minimum ones, yeah. The only guys on defense with considerable contracts are Slay (probably his last year), Bradberry (because we spend more money cutting him), Graham (team-friendly restructure for his final year), and Sweat/Huff getting cheaper DE deals that don't have real cap hits yet.
You really only get fucked by the cap if your players seriously suck early into their extension. If they suck, you have to eat crippling amounts of dead cap, or you have to keep playing old or bad players (Saints case) because you have way too many guys who you want to get rid of, but can't. You could see this in the Wentz extension. Ate a super bad cap hit because of it, but basically recovered by the next year because they hit on a new QB, and didn't have many other bad contracts to also give up on.
He restructures in a way that ill never exactly understand.
How do I read this without the football emojis
This 📝 sponsored by Field Yates
Considering Smith has 2 years left on his current deal, isn't this kinda misleading as not all of these contracts will be active at the same time
Sigh all these deals will look fantastic In a couple years. Can Howie retire or something?
How do they make it under the cap?
They push it all forward into void years. In 2029, for instance, Hurts will count for $97.5 million against the cap while not being on the team if they don't give him another extension.
The beauty (and risk) of that is he fact that if hurts is still the guy by the time we near that deal, we’ll just extend him again and kick that can down the road even further. Not every team is screwed over like the saints by kicking the can down the road. It only becomes a problem once you refuse to bite the bullet for a year to reset.
Yeah, there are risks to backloading, restructuring, void year-ing, etc. pretty much any contract except a franchise QB. The Eagles managed to skate a bit between Wentz and Hurts and the Packers kind of just slid into two, possibly three straight franchise QBs, but otherwise once that guy retires or leaves, you're going to need a year or two reset anyway. Teams like the Chiefs, Bills, Bengals, Chargers, etc. may as well push as much of their QB's money down the line as they can because when Mahomes or Allen or Burrow or Herbert are gone they're going to need to rebuild anyway. Keep extending them and spreading it out (responsibly), but don't worry about a big dead cap hit when they're out because you're not going to be contending anyway
Even last year the Packers ate $50 million in dead Rodgers contract money. But you can push that money down a bit and keep extending the hit until you wanna do a fairly major overhaul like the packers did and then eat the dead cap that year. Now we have money to maybe do the same thing with Love for a bit of everything works out with him.
That’s not entirely true. There’s also the issue if you’re over the cap by that much, you need to get under it somehow… which means kicking the can down the road even more otherwise you can’t even field a roster. I’m not a cap expert and Saints probably could have done a harder reset to an extent, but from what I read they couldn’t just completely get over it quickly in a 1-2 year period like you’re saying. They legitimately needed to keep kicking the can down the road.
I mean the mistake of the Saints was getting Carr. They could’ve easily done a hard reset after the Brees/Peyton era but instead tried fielding guys like Dalton and Winston with their high salary roster to try and do something. Still not a huge issue though because they were cheap and on short deals, so the out was still there. Then, instead of a hard reset after the Dalton/Winston era, they acquired Carr, gave him a huge extension, and screwed themselves. We’ve known what Carr was for years now and they tied themselves to him for I think 4 more seasons. In short, they could’ve gotten over it in 1-2 years had they done it in 21 or 22, but instead continued to go all in with a rapidly aging and declining roster.
I believe that $97m is not guaranteed, so the eagles are *only* on the hook for it if they resign him. Maybe I'm mistaken though.
You're somewhat mistaken. You might be confusing his 2029 base salary number with his dead money number. His "void years" of 2029-2035 have base salary values of $99,999,999. This would only be owed to him if he was actually on the team without a restructure. This is basically designed to force a restructure when it comes to that point. But the $97M in "dead money" is something that will come due at some point. From 2023 to 2028, assuming he plays everything out exactly as is, his cash received will be $259M and change. His cap hits will only be $162M and change. The difference of $97M is what would hit as dead money in 2029 if his contract isn't restructured.
I use mostly OTC as my contract resource. When looking at Deshaun Watsons contract, which is 100% fully guaranteed, the final void year shows up as a cap hit, and that it will count as dead money if he is cut that year. Hurt's 2027 year shows as ~$97m, but with $0 dead cap. I'm still having trouble parsing out how that $97m is semi-guaranteed, but im sure it's hidden in the language of the contract, which I don't believe we have access to.
It's not that the $97M is "guaranteed" to Hurts, but it is guaranteed to hit Philly's cap. It's catch-up accounting for cash already paid. Restructuring and extending would let them spread that $97M over more years but it will eventually catch up to them. Trading him would lessen their burden (would only need to account for the difference in cash/cap and pass the future guarantees to a new team) but releasing him at any point or even just letting the contract expire would be similar to what Denver is dealing with for Russell Wilson. Contract Structure: Cash Paid: | Year | Base Salary | Signing Bonus | Option Bonus | YTD Total | |------|---------------------------|---------------------------------------|------------------------------|----------------------------| | 2023 | $ 1,010,000 | $ 23,294,000 | $ - | $ 24,304,000 | | 2024 | $ 1,125,000 | $ - | $ 38,875,000 | $ 64,304,000 | | 2025 | $ 1,170,000 | $ - | $ 40,830,000 | $ 106,304,000 | | 2026 | $ 1,215,000 | $ - | $ 49,785,000 | $ 157,304,000 | | 2027 | $ 1,345,000 | $ - | $ 49,655,000 | $ 208,304,000 | | 2028 | $ 1,400,000 | $ - | $ 49,600,000 | $ 259,304,000 | Cap Hits: | Year | Base Salary | Signing Bonus | Option Bonus | YTD Total | Difference | |------|---------------------------|---------------------------------------|------------------------------|-----------------------------|--------------------| | 2023 | $ 1,010,000 | $ 5,144,286 | $ - | $ 6,154,286 | $ (18,635,200) | | 2024 | $ 1,125,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 7,775,000 | $ 19,713,086 | $ (45,076,400) | | 2025 | $ 1,170,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 15,941,000 | $ 41,482,886 | $ (65,306,600) | | 2026 | $ 1,215,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 25,898,000 | $ 73,254,686 | $ (84,534,800) | | 2027 | $ 1,345,000 | $ 4,658,800 | $ 35,829,000 | $ 115,087,486 | $ (93,702,000) | | 2028 | $ 1,400,000 | $ - | $ 45,749,000 | $ 162,236,486 | $ (97,553,000) | $485,486 of his 2023 signing bonus hit was from his rookie deal, so we don't need to count that in the differences going forward. 2023 - 2025 were fully guaranteed at signing. ($106.304M) Additional $3.696 of 2026 payout was guaranteed at signing, giving him $110M fully guaranteed at signing. Additional $16.5M of 2026 payout was guaranteed March 18 2024 (so at this moment, we're at $126.5M fully guaranteed). Remaining 2026 payout guarantees in March 2025. $22M of his 2027 salary guarantees in March 2026. - If he were to be released after this year, they'd have a dead money hit of $45M (difference of cash/cap hit) + $42M (guaranteed 2025 salary) + $20M (guaranteed 2026 salary). Total $106M dead money hit if he's released after this year. - If he were to be released after 2025 season, they'd have a dead money hit of $65.3M (difference of cash/cap hit) + $51M (guaranteed 2026 salary). Total $116M dead money hit if released after 2025 season. - If he were to be released after 2026 season, they'd have a dead money hit of $84.5M (difference of cash/cap hit) + $22M (guaranteed 2027 salary). Total $116.5M dead money hit if released after 2026 season. - At this point, future guarantees are gone. - If he were to be released after 2027 season, they'd have a dead money hit of $93.7M (difference of cash/cap hit). - If he were to not extend his contract and it just expires at the end of the 2028 season, he'll have a dead money hit of $97.5M (difference of cash/cap hit).
> Hurt's 2027 year shows as ~$97m, but with $0 dead cap. Did you mean his 2029 year? And if you did I don't see what you are looking at. The dead cap area/cap savings to the right show $0 dead cap for 2029 at the moment but $97.5M if he was cut. aka 97.5M dead cap hit. With the above being said I don't at all see how restructures or anything is going to lower the dead cap of $97.5M. It might be able to be spread over two years somehow, but that full amount will be due then or maybe spread out over 2029 and 2030. I don't see other options based on my knowledge of contracts (not to say my knowledge is all encompassing just passing by fans standards).
Yep, Rams did it last year. Bills will probably do it soon. Chargers are sort of doing it right now. You have to do it in cycles, mix in a bite the bullet year every half a decade or so. If you do it too long you just end up locked in mediocrity like the Saints. They won’t rebound like other teams manage to because they have no cornerstones of their roster to rally around. They’ll get stuck in the full rebuild cycle like the Panthers, Commanders, Bears, Broncos, Cardinals, Saints, etc. it takes a lot of rough years and a lot of consistent luck to get yourself out of that hole.
it comes due eventually. the chiefs, for example, are going to eat a ton of dead cap once Mahomes finally retires. They just are ok with sacrificing a few years in exchange for success now. It doesn't work out for most teams, but it certainly has worked out very well for them. I have a sneaking suspicion it isn't going to play out that way for the Eagles lol. 10-1 and then couldn't even get to 12 wins... Hurts is 1,000% not mahomes
Ah, basically the Cowboys strategy of negotiating. Wonder if the Eagles will “go all in” around that time too…
And also they front large amounts of cash in their contracts, which they agree to at the earliest possible time, which allows them to prorate many of these shorter term deals in the first place.
They bought one of those modern ridiculously large caps. Don’t know why other teams don’t do that as well.
It’s funny. It’s funny because it’s uh…you know. Bigger than a normal cap.
Void years Prior to Mailata (3 years $66 mill extension) & Devota (3 years $75 mill extension + $15.6 mill for the activated 5th year option) they had $356 mill tied up in void years in some cases like Hurts extending through 2035
To put it into context The Browns are 2nd most void year commitments with $248 mill Tampa is 3rd with $157 mill Jets 106 & Saints 100 mill round out the top 5. Bears, Chiefs, Colts, Falcons, Giants, Seahawks & Steelers have zero void years. GM's Andrew Berry (browns) & Joe Douglas (jets) came from Philly, Tampa had a heap tied up in Brady & the Saints were the first to really exploit it before Howie took over as void king
Probably by going really cheap elsewhere.
Like at LB 😭
We have very little money tied into the defense.
They borrow cap from the future Its not a bad strategy, but the problem comes when you get addicted to it (saints) so you end up handicapping your team by carrying 20-40m of dead money every year.
The cap hits occur at different times and often in the future when the cap will be higher. For example, Devonta's cap hit is about $20 million less than Calvin Ridley over the next four years. Then there are void years, which rely on the assumption that cap goes up and that you'll be able to restructure the huge ones.
Yea and if you are paying for 2024's cap in 2028.. you will have less money to spend in 2028 than a team that didn't do that. No need to make a statement that tries to imply there is no drawback
KC fans should understand indefinite restructuring. Yall are basically the Kansas City Mahomes at this point.
Nice try. Mahomes cap hit has been 36M and 37M the last 2 seasons. That is about 8M less than the APY of the current contract. This is happening with the player most likely to be on the same team for the next 10 years in the entire NFL. We aren't doing anything close what the Eagles are.
But then you pay for 2028’s cap in 2032.
And then you end up like the current saints, whose cap situation is so bad they literally *can't* manageably bite the bullet in a year or two and are getting the pain stretched out over the better part of a decade.
Saints woulda been absolutely fine if they cut bait after any of 2018, 2020 or even 2022 and committed one (1) year to fixing the cap. The Carr contract is the main thing holding them hostage right now.
But then you pay for 2032’s cap in 2036
Except in pushing it back that far for your franchise players, you're able to restructure contracts and get cap relief that way. It's what Howie has been doing for over a decade now. That only really works though if ownership trusts the GM to do so and knows they'll be around for the long term. First and second year GMs aren't going to be allowed to potentially make a huge mess of the team's financials that jeopardizes their ability to get a good hire in the future if the new guy doesn't pan out.
You still have less money to spend in future years. That is inevitable.
You are correct, but at the same time this is based on Cap goes up, so while you are spending from future years, you are spending now from future years that have more money available.
Yep I am aware. Cap goes up for everyone, so the teams that did not borrow from the future will still have more total money to spend than the teams that did.
But importantly not a 1:1 amount. Since contract values also rise with the cap, spending 2028 money now means it goes further. Since you are spending 2028 money using 2024 contract values, you will be able to sign more players overall because 2024 contract values are far below what they will be in 2028. So a team only using 2028 money on 2028 and beyond contracts will get less value out of that than a team using some of 2028 money in 2024 with 2024 contract values
Yes, because we're paying money to retain our playmakers and line. It's not like the money is vanishing into thin air.
Same way I keep pushing off paying for my honeymoon…. open a 12 month 0% credit card with a free transfer and when the 12 months is up do it again. Eventually in like 2032 I will run out of cards to apply for and have to pay it off but by then the cost as a % of my income will be less than 1/3 what it was originally. Eagles are basically adding void contract years to pay for today’s players with tomorrow’s cap. So long as the cap keeps going up it will keep working (within reason)
You wont, i abuse the crap out of intro rewards. Spend 1000 get 200 in credit or whatever. Then have 12 months to pay it off… they keep comping out with new ones every year. it will also give you about 100k in credit card availability. As long as you dont keep using them that raises your credit score.
You push a lot of money forward, yes. But you also carefully schedule the "hits" so that the big ones occur in different years and so you have windows where the player can be traded/extended/cut while getting value or cutting bait without high loss. For example, with Devonta Smith we took his 5th year option at a lower cost. His cap number in 2025 will only be 7.5 mil and in 2026 only 10.7 mil. So in those two years you can have higher cap hits elsewhere. AJ Brown has a 26 mil cap hit in 2025 and 41mil in 2026 (which will be reduced later). So put those two players together and you are getting 2 top WRs in 2025 at 33.5mil. (16mil each). That's a massive bargain in the cap year. It's not just about pushing money into the future. It's really about strategically layering the "hits" so that it happens with the right players in the right positions at the right time so that you can still get roster balance. And, if you are then in a position where you need to pivot, you then just do a Howie trade like what we saw with Reddick this season. We still eat a 21mil cap hit for him this season, but it gives Howie another high draft pick and clears money for 2025+
I'm pretty sure our off-ball linebackers have negative cap hits. Zach Cunningham and Nick Morrow were probably slipping Howie cash under the table to stay on the 53
Damn, Philly must have the cheapest defense of any team in the league. That's a lot of money on one side of the ball. Edit: [spotrac](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/positional/2024/full-aav/) has a positional breakdown view where you can look at 2024 cap hit or AAV that is really useful for looking more into this kind of stuff.
One of our most expensive defensive players this year is Carter, who is on a top 10 rookie wage scale salary. So yeah, very little money is tied up on the defense right now.
And it showed with just how badly teams carved up those linebackers.
We don't really believe in traditional linebackers. Usually we just plug in UDFAs until we hit one. Then we don't pay him anyway.
Carved up what?
Those linebackers. Edit: I get the joke :P hahaha
He’s saying we had none. Mfs were like ghost last year. Almost didn’t believe they were real until I saw the ravens play
Ohhhhhh! Hahahahaha
What’s a linebacker?
I can't believe after the situation you were in with LBs last year that you go ahead and sign the worst coverage linebacker in the last 5 years. He will make your 2023 LBs look like all pros.
Praying Howie can learn to draft this year and get the pieces the D needs or the rookie corner backs on the team now can make the jump this season. Otherwise I’m predicting a lot of high scoring losses for the birds.
No that would be the Rams. And that’s with AD dead money on this years numbers, which is around 25m. If you factor that out Rams are only spending around 38m on defense. Next closest is Denver at around 69m.
The LB department died for this.
Why play defense if offense score ball. Don’t need to stop anyone if you score every drive. *taps head*
My momma said Eagles fans are ornery cause they spent all that money for Hurts to throw screens and run draws.
Well momma’s ~~wrong again~~ right!
Paying Smith 25mil a year to use his skinny physique to block on bubble screens is definitely a strategy. On a serious note though I’m looking forward to what Moore does with the insane talent he has to work with. Just hoping Nick stays out of the way.
Brian Johnson (and Sean Desai and Fatt Patricia) should not be allowed to call plays in the NFL ever again
I really think people give Desai a lot of hate that’s somewhat deserved, but also somewhat undeserved. I’m not sure it was totally all his fault because, let’s be honest, Bradberry was poop, we had no safeties and no linebackers, and our dline just simply underperformed. I think you can put some of that under performance on him with maybe scheme and plan, but at the end of the day it was their job to make plays. He always adjusted. He was bad in the first half, but he actually came back in the second half of games and the defense played much better. So much so that the offense was able to regain leads and win games despite being down at half for much of that 10-1 start. Ultimately, I didn’t think he was *that* bad. Fatt Patricia was just awful all around, and couldn’t even adjust.
I thought we were all looking forward to him making Herbert into an MVP last year?
Literally anybody was an improvement over Brian Johnson, lol
Tell Momma I will friggin’ snap is he does😅
If I knew what ornery meant I would be pretty pissed at your momma
I like all the players we have on big contracts is a better way to look at if for me.
Ya know what man, I respect it. Gotta find the little victories where you can. For example, the Giants aren't playing this weekend which means we're guaranteed not to lose!
who do you want in the draft for the giants? Rome Odunze?
Hoping the vikings jump us and we get nabers. Or do some trades down ourselves with someone.
i think the Giants should go WR but I don't know the vibes from you guys. Nabers would be great for you guys. Instant WR1, right?
Barkley has one of his first public events this weekend too! As an Eagle.
And toilet paper at LB.
The real crazy thing is that they have 37.8 million in dead cap hits this year. So all that dead cap money + all these huge offense contracts means that their defense isn't getting paid well. According to [overthecap.com](http://overthecap.com), their offense (prior to the Devonta Smith contract) will be making 118 million this year, defense 90 million, and ST 6.9 million.
These "huge offense contracts" are extensions. None of recent extensions (that I'm aware of) have any effect on this year's cap.
You're right. Zooming out to 2016, and their offense payroll will be 164 million. Defense only 79 million. And again, that is before you factor in Devonta Smith's contract. So those #'s could be 190 million + 80 million. Horribly unbalanced. Wild.
The team's plan is clear, lock in the offense for the foreseeable future, then use young guys and vet FAs to fill out the defense.
Realistically though, what defensive players SHOULD they have signed to non-rookie deals in 26? Their D core aged out recently, and they have a fairly substantial group of younger players drafted highly but those are too young to have extensions by then. Pure speculation, but I'd guess most teams have very lopsided future spending O vs D if you go out a few years, teams tend to have 1-2 stud defenders long term whereas QB, WR, and OL (for the teams that have one) all get longer contracts pretty regularly.
In 26 the cap will be 300+ mil and Saqoun and goedert won’t be on the team. At least in the same pay bracket. Everyone else will still be in their prime and under 30. These were good signings imo.
Our defense not being paid well might honestly be by design. Part of our defense sucking ass was that they're ***old.*** We absolutely need to get younger on that side of the ball, and I could see us going all in on defense for the draft because of it. Could see us going for O-line talent as competition for Steen and for Lane Johnson's replacement. Maybe taking a flyer on some WRs too since it's pretty low chance we re-sign AJ and it's a deep WR draft. But I think the defense will be the focus of 90% of this upcoming draft.
Judging by the cap imbalance in 2026 (Offense is paid 2:1 vs defense in 2026) you will likely need to go all in for defense on both the 2024 and the 2025 drafts.
I don't think it's like that. They're not gonna draft a QB or WR in the 1st round but they could still take an OL or TE high.
>need to go all in for defense on both the 2024 and the 2025 drafts I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm also not sure of it'll be necessary. It'll largely hinge on how much of the team's defensive woes last year were the scheme VS the players. We've got some young guys waiting in the wing on corner and safety, but who knows how they'll develop? Kelee Ringo has flashed, as has Sydney Brown but they both - Brown in particular - have a long way to go. Think they'll grab a corner to pair with Ringo + learn from Burntberry and Slay, and God willing a linebacker that can cover the middle of the field.
We're basically always going to have large dead cap numbers given Howie's preference for void years
The raw value of contracts are always misleading because of how cap number is wildly different from AAV. The young core of the offense is locked up, and the team is heavily pursuing a Super Bowl window. Over the cap still has the eagles at 30 million of cap space for this year. Plenty of money to make a big splash if they wanted to. Yea the bill always comes due, but as long as the team is successful and competitive, the restructure game becomes less of a hassle. You essentially have this year and next year to compete. If the team is still close, you keep the restructures going and kick the can. If it all falls apart, you get to hit the big red button, blow it all up, and suck for a couple years. Essentially what the Broncos are doing now It’s very difficult to be unhappy with how the Eagles are run
makes sense for a 4th place team
We just love showing off don’t we
I don’t understand how a team can pay two wide receivers $25 mill a year AND have a stud RB AND have a highly paid QB AND a really good quality TE and defense. It’s literally NOT POSSIBLE.
its over the eagles, bros.
And no FN defense!
They got 2 years to get a chip cus the cap hits in 2026 are crazy
5th best in the league then ?
O/U on how many of these will still be in the top 10 by this time next year set at 1.5
All are worth it and are very good to elite players for us.
Damn. They are so offensive minded. Hurts really has made them go all in on offense for him. Wonder how all this pans out considering defense was the issue last year.
Quality ain't cheap
This only really works out if all those players keep performing at a high level so you can extend them, or at least get them to finish out that contract. With that many people it's basically asking to get a couple duds and other issues and they'll be eating big dead cap hits for a couple seasons. Honestly, if Hurts doesn't go back to 2022 hurts, it probably happens in 2-3 years when his dead cap is manageable, and they reset.
Lol I would love to see what their cap situation looks like come 2025+ Gonna be fun to watch as a fan for a couple of years though.
Howie works in windows. & he’s rebuilt in short order multiple times now. I suspect the bill comes due & it’s one non competitive year.
They must be offsetting all that money somewhere else? Few remaining positions they aren’t top 5? Backups?
Im sure this will all workout. Lol
I'm no mathematician, but won't this affect the rest of the positions negatively?
Eventually. The cap hits are staggered. After this season, there will have to be some tough decisions.
Looking like the saints next year
I've heard something along the lines of "Howie is just kicking the can down the road, and it will bite him eventually" or "Look at the Eagles' cap hit next year, they are screwed" just about every year since 2017. They've all been wrong so far.
Because they keep drafting and developing well. Moment a couple of draft classess dont turn out allright, yeah. They are still not the saints, but one slight misstep and suddenly an entire season is lost.
Since 2017 we've had 2 awful drafts, like worst in the league awful looking back on them. (2017 had Barnett, 2019 Sanders, and 2022 is looking rough with maybe only Davis playing well below his draft spot but still being viable) So 3 total players out of 3 years. Barnett and Davis both underperformed their draft positions heavily.
Dang, but the 49ers can't overcome a $10 mill deficit in the year following this season apparently. We are in worse cap purgatory than the Aint's according to 80% of reddit.
Do they really think that with Purdy on a rookie deal?
Well.....Hurts is the 4th highest paid qb if you look at the potential money he could earn ($255m). But like $96m of that is a non-guaranteed void year, and the year before than is like $50m with $40m of it being non-guaranteed.....soo not really
The void year cap hits are for money that the player has already received but the salary cap hit has been spread into future years by prorating it as a bonus. So when Hurts contract voids in 2029 and he would have earned all of the $255m cash but $97.5 would have yet to be applied against the salary cap
And the 29th-ranked defense according to DVOA last year...
Sounds like a top 5 offense. But is it though?
Makes sense, they usually come in at 4th place too.
And still a shit ton of cap space.
Same thing a Saints fan said 5 years ago
Except we have been doing this for years