The whole key to the offseason right here

[Chris Meck]

Originally Posted by YontsRBake

I can’t find a definitive answer. From what I can find, Pats took dead money for Cassel but I can’t find anything saying we took dead money for doing the same thing with Allen. I feel like it’s very unlikely teams don’t take a penalty for doing this though, or it would be far more common.

If you're trading a player under contract, there may well be some dead money, and that may or may not be on a contract by contract basis, I don't know.

If you're tagging a player, you are committed to paying him that tag number and have to do so or cut him outright. But there's no dead cap, because there's no cap number other than the one year deal you've committed to.

If you're able to trade that player, cool, the new team is taking the player and his tag number. They can renegotiate immediately if they want, extend the player and whatever, and that's up to them. the original team is off the hook.

there's no penalty because the tag is a penalty in and of itself: it's an expensive one year contract. If you tag him and nobody wants him, you either have to remove the tag and let him walk for nothing, or pay him the $16 m or so.

But, he'd be last year's most effective pass rusher to hit the market; someone with cap room and need will bite.