Let’s talk about the Salary Cap, and teams uses of it

[Jamie]

Originally Posted by Coochie liquor

Still trying to understand the backloading of contracts. Does that just mean they’re pushing guaranteed money to future years, or is that non guaranteed money to make the contract seem bigger because of APY?

It's mainly pushing back guaranteed money. The downside comes when the contract ends, the money that's been spread out over the void years accelerates onto the present year.

For example, Thuney is on the last year of his deal, but hypothetically we could convert most of his base salary into a signing bonus, and spread it out over 5 years (2025 + 4 void years). Then when his contract ends in 2026, the money we spread out over those void years would accelerate and become dead money on the 2026 cap. But effectively we would have moved roughly half his cap hit for 2025 onto 2026. Or we could extend him in 2026 and continue kicking the can down the road.

That's the simple version, I don't entirely understand the option bonus voodoo the Eagles are doing. I gather the principle is the same, but I can't decipher what exactly their Spotrac pages mean.