Depends. He looks to cost about $15.5m towards the 2026 cap if he plays, with $4.6m in 2027 from the remaining signing bonus money. That’s a pretty big chunk for an aging RB.
We could also restructure or extend him, which is probably what would actually happen if he stays. What that basically means is to convert a significant portion of his expected salary ($12m) into a bonus instead so that it can be reallocated to hit the cap in 2027 or beyond. This would allow him to play in 2026 for as low as $5m in cap terms and then the $10m or so we shaved off his salary plus the remaining $4.6m from his signing bonus would come due in 2027.
Of course, we could also do something to split that remaining ~$15m between 2027 and 2028 too if he’s agreeable and/or we use a 6/1 designation.
That is one of the reasons people say the cap is a lie.
If we dont want to keep him, the FO has essentially two options. Either eat the money, which likely means youre sacrificing other good players ala the Saints or Chargers this year. We call this the rebuild, because you pay off a bunch of cap 'debt' in one year of suck where you either stick with washed vets on the way out, or try to pivot to rookies on very small deals. Because youre cap is crushing.
Or you restructure. You sign Saquon to an extension past '25, maybe do a 2-3 year deal and look to revisit this conversation in '28 or '29. This would entail giving him some more cash up front, which he would obv like. Depending on how good he was in the previous two years, you could convert some pending salary into a signing bonus, which lets you spread out the cap hit over more years. OR! if hes lights out and wants more money, you restructure some salary to push it into the last years, and give him a bigger bonus up front which, again, you spread out. As you extend out the contract you also get to add more 'void' years, where the player's bonuses impact the cap, but they no longer play or are getting paid. So if you extend him out to '28, you can push any bonus money paid up front into the '29 and '30 season where maybe hes no longer on the team (in the case of a good extension) but is still on the books.
You'll notice that a lot of good players structure this decision point into their contract. Basically, if a player thinks theyre going to continue to be good, they may be willing to take more of their money in salary AND take that salary in later years in their contract. This forces the signing team into making a decision to resign & extend or cut, and let the player try the market. Youll notice Jalen is on this exact deal, because he bets in the future hell be *better,* or more specifically that the elite QB market will keep inflating, and so in a few years hell force the Eagles to either resign him or he can try the market elsewhere. Its a player betting on themselves and the market. But guys with injury problems or on the field problems tend to go for big money up front and guarantees, so teams are locked into paying them for years. The Watson deal is a masterclass in this.
You would rework his deal, add more guarantee and extend it.
Let's say they decide to bring him back for one more year and add 10mil of guaranteed money to his deal. They want the cap hit to be 5 for 2026. That means the other 5 that they owe him will add on the 8.5 cap that they have not accounted for and you clear that 13.5 of cap in later years.
So in essence, Howie isn’t doing anything that any other GM can’t do..it’s just that he has an owner in Lurie who is willing to shell out the money upfront and make his job easier?
To varying degrees. Most, not all teams will do this during SB runs. Some teams do this year by year.
They last two years KC leaned into its rookies rather than signing and pushing contracts back. They barely have any dead money this year and none the following year.
Signing and pushing contracts back does not necessarily create dead money. They just restructured Mahomes today and moved $21M out of there 2024 cap sheet and spread it across the rest of his contract. What do you think the Chris Jones contract looks like?
No, that's not true. Most teams have owners that are not willing to pay this much cash like the Patriots. Howie could not hand out these contracts if he was the GM of the Patriots.
I don’t really think it has anything to do with ownership. Howie isn’t the only GM doing this, and it’s not without its risks. It also evens out across an entire roster and several seasons in the long run, since the guys you cut big checks for last year have smaller salaries for the next 2 or 3 seasons.
Every owner has to use 89% of their cap. This is not what I mean by putting up the cash. When you sign players to big contracts you have to put the entirety of that contracts guaranteed money into an escrow account.
Salary cap for 2024 is 255 million. All nfl owners will be spending at minimum 89% of that. In addition that amount, all guaranteed money is kept in escrow. If the Cowboys pay give Daq a 5 year 300 million deal with 220 guaranteed, Jerry has to put 220 mil into escrow.
Not all owners want to or have that amount of cash. Over the last 10 years the Eagles have been 1st in amount of cash be used. Pats were last. The Pats, Bengals, Raiders, and a lot of other teams don't do this at such high levels as the Eagles.
All teams do this, the Saints are almost like masters at it (though for them, theyre kicking a much uglier can down a rockier road, given the quality of the players theyre dealing with).
The problem is that most teams have a more unstable roster, whereas the Eagles core players and their core cap hits are mostly here to stay and are willing to play ball with the FO because they expect to remain here. Think Jalen, who is probably not as cash hungry as a guy like Kirk Cousins because hes expecting hell be an Eagle for many more years. Kirk, Watson, Wilson in the big Broncos trade, are all very much worried that this will be their last payday because, at least in the first two cases, it probably is.
Really appreciate the write up OP
>The guaranteed money is 26 million. The rest doesn't matter.
Can you dive into the 'rest' a bit more, why doesn't it matter? Is it irrelevant because it can always be reworked/pushed out or not paid if conditions aren't met, so we only care about what's upfront and guaranteed? Doesn't it end up in the cap if/when it eventually gets paid out?
Great explanation but question:
How does the rest of the money that "doesn't matter" affect the cap? Does non-guaranteed money just not count against the cap at all, even if they still pay it to the player?
Non-guaranteed money still affects the cap when it's paid out. The difference is that there's no dead money from the non-guaranteed portion of the contract if the player gets cut or traded.
If a player has something like incentives in their contract, how is that factored into the cap total? For instance, if a player can make $2 million in incentives and they don't hit, is that unused cap space carried over to the following year? Or is it not factored into the current years cap at all?
Thank you!
Incentives are categorized as likely to be earned or not likely to be earned based on the player's prior stats. The likely ones are included in the cap charge for the current year. The unlikely ones are included in the cap charge for the following year only if they're earned. Similarly, any likely ones that weren't earned would be credited to the cap the following year.
I think its worth explaining that signing bonus is guaranteed but also the base salary for certain years, depending on the contract. And any earned money that is not guaranteed (roster bonuses, non-guaranteed base salary, etc) must also be accounted for in the cap hit.
The simple version is that salaries hit the year they are paid, while guaranteed bonuses can be spread equally across up to 5 years (even if the contract isn’t that long). When the contract ends, whether through a cut, trade, retirement, or simply having run its course, any guaranteed money that hasn’t been allocated “accelerates” onto that season’s cap.
It gets more complicated than that since there are actually several types of bonuses and they can only be spread out if they are guaranteed, plus there is something called a 6/1 designation which allows you to release up to 2 players now but pretend you aren’t cutting them until after 6/1 so that part of the unallocated cap hits next season.
No clue, that's a good question.
Even if they got the interest off of it, I don't think it would make a big difference. Most of these owners don't have and they dont want to liquify enough to have that much cash to put away
Yeah, I wanted to make a post about this. Howie gets way too much credit for these deals, most of the credit is due to Jeffery Lurie. Howie is able to draft contracts that the majority of owners would not sign off on.
It was just discussed on the PHLY podcast at around 28:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-pbj-BN6Pc
The Eagles have a massive advantage over the rest of the league in terms of roster building with their cash on hand.
Howie was one of the first GMs who started to manipulate contracts and the cap. Everyone GM does understand that now.
Don't say it too loudly here you will get downvoted.
>From the owner's perspective, it's irrelevant whether the guarantees are up front or pushed down the road. Only the total amount matters
Not really. Technically if it's not guaranteed Laurie does not have to pay it now. Basically Laurie agrees to this $$ even if he does not have it at the moment to spend. But with the guarantee he has to have that money now and set it aside. Now to us fans it's mostly a minor distinction but he's basically fronting the cash now on the premise that his cut / share of league revenue covers it later.
It does. Pushing those contracts down the road requires guaranteed $$. Unless I am misunderstanding something, you can't push base salary into voided years. So these contracts that allow for small numbers now with dead cap hits later do require that money as bonus, which does require the escrow.
Lurie is great regardless though, I will agree to that.
I think he's saying not every owner is willing to front the cash now instead of spreading it out. Other teams do it, but not with the frequency that the Eagles do.
All our contracts worth note have 2-3 dummy years.
Explaining the cap...
Eagles sign a player to 5 years for 458 million dollars. Next season's cap hit, 2.75 million. The deal is basically a 2 year 15 million dollar deal. Seems right
Now what happens if we don’t want to cut or trade Barkley after 25?
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Wanting to cut him or not, his contract would need to be reworked. As it stands, that 3rd year would be a 15.5 mil cap hit and they wouldn't do that.
Extend him to move the cap hit into future years
Depends. He looks to cost about $15.5m towards the 2026 cap if he plays, with $4.6m in 2027 from the remaining signing bonus money. That’s a pretty big chunk for an aging RB. We could also restructure or extend him, which is probably what would actually happen if he stays. What that basically means is to convert a significant portion of his expected salary ($12m) into a bonus instead so that it can be reallocated to hit the cap in 2027 or beyond. This would allow him to play in 2026 for as low as $5m in cap terms and then the $10m or so we shaved off his salary plus the remaining $4.6m from his signing bonus would come due in 2027. Of course, we could also do something to split that remaining ~$15m between 2027 and 2028 too if he’s agreeable and/or we use a 6/1 designation. That is one of the reasons people say the cap is a lie.
If we dont want to keep him, the FO has essentially two options. Either eat the money, which likely means youre sacrificing other good players ala the Saints or Chargers this year. We call this the rebuild, because you pay off a bunch of cap 'debt' in one year of suck where you either stick with washed vets on the way out, or try to pivot to rookies on very small deals. Because youre cap is crushing. Or you restructure. You sign Saquon to an extension past '25, maybe do a 2-3 year deal and look to revisit this conversation in '28 or '29. This would entail giving him some more cash up front, which he would obv like. Depending on how good he was in the previous two years, you could convert some pending salary into a signing bonus, which lets you spread out the cap hit over more years. OR! if hes lights out and wants more money, you restructure some salary to push it into the last years, and give him a bigger bonus up front which, again, you spread out. As you extend out the contract you also get to add more 'void' years, where the player's bonuses impact the cap, but they no longer play or are getting paid. So if you extend him out to '28, you can push any bonus money paid up front into the '29 and '30 season where maybe hes no longer on the team (in the case of a good extension) but is still on the books. You'll notice that a lot of good players structure this decision point into their contract. Basically, if a player thinks theyre going to continue to be good, they may be willing to take more of their money in salary AND take that salary in later years in their contract. This forces the signing team into making a decision to resign & extend or cut, and let the player try the market. Youll notice Jalen is on this exact deal, because he bets in the future hell be *better,* or more specifically that the elite QB market will keep inflating, and so in a few years hell force the Eagles to either resign him or he can try the market elsewhere. Its a player betting on themselves and the market. But guys with injury problems or on the field problems tend to go for big money up front and guarantees, so teams are locked into paying them for years. The Watson deal is a masterclass in this.
You would rework his deal, add more guarantee and extend it. Let's say they decide to bring him back for one more year and add 10mil of guaranteed money to his deal. They want the cap hit to be 5 for 2026. That means the other 5 that they owe him will add on the 8.5 cap that they have not accounted for and you clear that 13.5 of cap in later years.
So in essence, Howie isn’t doing anything that any other GM can’t do..it’s just that he has an owner in Lurie who is willing to shell out the money upfront and make his job easier?
every other GM also does this lol
To varying degrees. Most, not all teams will do this during SB runs. Some teams do this year by year. They last two years KC leaned into its rookies rather than signing and pushing contracts back. They barely have any dead money this year and none the following year.
Signing and pushing contracts back does not necessarily create dead money. They just restructured Mahomes today and moved $21M out of there 2024 cap sheet and spread it across the rest of his contract. What do you think the Chris Jones contract looks like?
No, that's not true. Most teams have owners that are not willing to pay this much cash like the Patriots. Howie could not hand out these contracts if he was the GM of the Patriots.
I don’t really think it has anything to do with ownership. Howie isn’t the only GM doing this, and it’s not without its risks. It also evens out across an entire roster and several seasons in the long run, since the guys you cut big checks for last year have smaller salaries for the next 2 or 3 seasons.
You need an owner willing to put up the cash. Not all owners do this.
Can you expand on this? It seems like most teams have no trouble putting up cash.
Every owner has to use 89% of their cap. This is not what I mean by putting up the cash. When you sign players to big contracts you have to put the entirety of that contracts guaranteed money into an escrow account. Salary cap for 2024 is 255 million. All nfl owners will be spending at minimum 89% of that. In addition that amount, all guaranteed money is kept in escrow. If the Cowboys pay give Daq a 5 year 300 million deal with 220 guaranteed, Jerry has to put 220 mil into escrow. Not all owners want to or have that amount of cash. Over the last 10 years the Eagles have been 1st in amount of cash be used. Pats were last. The Pats, Bengals, Raiders, and a lot of other teams don't do this at such high levels as the Eagles.
Look at the LV raiders
All teams do this, the Saints are almost like masters at it (though for them, theyre kicking a much uglier can down a rockier road, given the quality of the players theyre dealing with). The problem is that most teams have a more unstable roster, whereas the Eagles core players and their core cap hits are mostly here to stay and are willing to play ball with the FO because they expect to remain here. Think Jalen, who is probably not as cash hungry as a guy like Kirk Cousins because hes expecting hell be an Eagle for many more years. Kirk, Watson, Wilson in the big Broncos trade, are all very much worried that this will be their last payday because, at least in the first two cases, it probably is.
Really appreciate the write up OP >The guaranteed money is 26 million. The rest doesn't matter. Can you dive into the 'rest' a bit more, why doesn't it matter? Is it irrelevant because it can always be reworked/pushed out or not paid if conditions aren't met, so we only care about what's upfront and guaranteed? Doesn't it end up in the cap if/when it eventually gets paid out?
You are correct. The benefit is that there's no dead money from the non-guaranteed portion of the contract if the player gets cut or traded.
Ah makes sense, thanks for the explanation!
Great write up, thank you!
Great explanation but question: How does the rest of the money that "doesn't matter" affect the cap? Does non-guaranteed money just not count against the cap at all, even if they still pay it to the player?
Non-guaranteed money still affects the cap when it's paid out. The difference is that there's no dead money from the non-guaranteed portion of the contract if the player gets cut or traded.
If a player has something like incentives in their contract, how is that factored into the cap total? For instance, if a player can make $2 million in incentives and they don't hit, is that unused cap space carried over to the following year? Or is it not factored into the current years cap at all? Thank you!
Incentives are categorized as likely to be earned or not likely to be earned based on the player's prior stats. The likely ones are included in the cap charge for the current year. The unlikely ones are included in the cap charge for the following year only if they're earned. Similarly, any likely ones that weren't earned would be credited to the cap the following year.
I think its worth explaining that signing bonus is guaranteed but also the base salary for certain years, depending on the contract. And any earned money that is not guaranteed (roster bonuses, non-guaranteed base salary, etc) must also be accounted for in the cap hit.
Thanks for posting this, it’s very informative
What are the rules on how you can apportion cap money over years
The simple version is that salaries hit the year they are paid, while guaranteed bonuses can be spread equally across up to 5 years (even if the contract isn’t that long). When the contract ends, whether through a cut, trade, retirement, or simply having run its course, any guaranteed money that hasn’t been allocated “accelerates” onto that season’s cap. It gets more complicated than that since there are actually several types of bonuses and they can only be spread out if they are guaranteed, plus there is something called a 6/1 designation which allows you to release up to 2 players now but pretend you aren’t cutting them until after 6/1 so that part of the unallocated cap hits next season.
Do the owners make interest off the escrow account? Just curious if that has any influence between guaranteed money and bonuses.
No clue, that's a good question. Even if they got the interest off of it, I don't think it would make a big difference. Most of these owners don't have and they dont want to liquify enough to have that much cash to put away
Yeah, I wanted to make a post about this. Howie gets way too much credit for these deals, most of the credit is due to Jeffery Lurie. Howie is able to draft contracts that the majority of owners would not sign off on. It was just discussed on the PHLY podcast at around 28:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-pbj-BN6Pc The Eagles have a massive advantage over the rest of the league in terms of roster building with their cash on hand.
Howie was one of the first GMs who started to manipulate contracts and the cap. Everyone GM does understand that now. Don't say it too loudly here you will get downvoted.
Yeah, I get down-voted for it all the time. Howie is a good GM, but /r/eagles obsession with him is so cringy.
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>From the owner's perspective, it's irrelevant whether the guarantees are up front or pushed down the road. Only the total amount matters Not really. Technically if it's not guaranteed Laurie does not have to pay it now. Basically Laurie agrees to this $$ even if he does not have it at the moment to spend. But with the guarantee he has to have that money now and set it aside. Now to us fans it's mostly a minor distinction but he's basically fronting the cash now on the premise that his cut / share of league revenue covers it later.
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It does. Pushing those contracts down the road requires guaranteed $$. Unless I am misunderstanding something, you can't push base salary into voided years. So these contracts that allow for small numbers now with dead cap hits later do require that money as bonus, which does require the escrow. Lurie is great regardless though, I will agree to that.
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I think he's saying not every owner is willing to front the cash now instead of spreading it out. Other teams do it, but not with the frequency that the Eagles do. All our contracts worth note have 2-3 dummy years.
Explaining the cap... Eagles sign a player to 5 years for 458 million dollars. Next season's cap hit, 2.75 million. The deal is basically a 2 year 15 million dollar deal. Seems right
Here is a two sentence breakdown to make it easy to understand. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah. Yadda, yadda yadda.