Most of the questions I recently received on Twitter have been about the salary cap consequences for trading for a player.
Background: When a team trades for a player, it becomes responsible for paying the player’s remaining salary and remaining bonuses if there are any. The player’s signing bonus proration remains with his old team. Any incentives are re-evaluated. A trade this week means becoming responsible for paying the acquired player’s salary for 13 weeks. A trade next week means becoming responsible for paying the acquired player’s salary for 12 weeks. The trade deadline is 4 p.m., Tuesday, October 29. Please also note that the players are paid for 17 weeks during the season since they are paid during their bye week.
In order for the Patriots to acquire a player whose new cap number would be higher than the Patriots current cap space number of $2,881,550 — say, Vikings wide receiver
Stefon Diggs — one of four things or a combination of the four would have to happen:
1.) Lower a current Patriot player’s cap number by converting most of his remaining salary into a signing bonus like they did earlier this year with
Stephon Gilmore. The cap savings column is also the amount of signing bonus proration that will be pushed into the future. For example, Donta Hightower’s 2020 cap number would increase by $2,320,882 to $14,266,195.
[TH]Player[/TH]
[TH]Signed Through[/TH]
[TH]Current Salary[/TH]
[TH]Earned Salary[/TH]
[TH]Salary for the last 13 weeks[/TH]
[TH]New Total Salary[/TH]
[TH]Signing Bonus[/TH]
[TH]sb proration[/TH]
[TH]Cap Savings[/TH]
Dont'a Hightower |
2020 |
7,000,000 |
1,647,059 |
711,176 |
2,358,235 |
4,641,765 |
2,320,882 |
2,320,882 |
Shaq Mason |
2023 |
4,000,000 |
941,176 |
615,588 |
1,556,765 |
2,443,235 |
488,647 |
1,954,588 |
Michael Bennett |
2020 |
3,000,000 |
705,882 |
787,647 |
1,493,529 |
1,506,471 |
753,235 |
753,235 |
Duron Harmon |
2020 |
2,500,000 |
588,235 |
711,176 |
1,299,412 |
1,200,588 |
600,294 |
600,294 |
James White |
2020 |
2,500,000 |
588,235 |
615,588 |
1,203,824 |
1,296,176 |
648,088 |
648,088 |
Lawrence Guy |
2020 |
2,400,000 |
564,706 |
711,176 |
1,275,882 |
1,124,118 |
562,059 |
562,059 |
Jason McCourty |
2020 |
2,000,000 |
470,588 |
787,647 |
1,258,235 |
741,765 |
370,882 |
370,882 |
Tom Brady |
2021 |
1,750,000 |
411,765 |
787,647 |
1,199,412 |
550,588 |
183,529 |
367,059 |
Rex Burkhead |
2020 |
1,750,000 |
411,765 |
711,176 |
1,122,941 |
627,059 |
313,529 |
313,529 |
2.) Extend a player with a large salary lowering his salary to the minimum as part of the extension.
Kyle Van Noymakes the most sense for this scenario.
Here’s my projection of a Kyle Van Noy extension.
If the Patriots did this, it would free up $1.35 million of cap space for this season.
Another possible way to create cap space would be to give
Devin McCourty an extension that lowers his salary to the minimum and contained voidable years.
- $4,936,941 in cap space would be created if the extension included four voidable years.
- $4,628,382 with three voidable years.
- $4,114,118 with two voidable years.
- $3,085,588 with one voidable year.
3.) The player’s old team could, before the trade, pay the player a signing bonus while lowering his 2019 salary. Doing so would lower his cap number for the Patriots.
Let’s use Diggs as an example.
The Patriots could ask the Vikings to give Diggs a signing bonus before the trade. In exchange for receiving the same signing bonus, Diggs would agree to lower his 2019 salary.
Let’s say the Vikings were to give him this week a $6,190,294 signing bonus Diggs’ salary with the Patriots for the last 13 weeks of the season would then be $615,588. See the trades for
Eugene Monroe and
Levi Brown for precedents.
4.) Include a current Patriot in the trade to offset partially the incoming cap hit.
[TH]Player[/TH]
[TH]Yearly Salary[/TH]
[TH]13 Weeks Salary[/TH]
[TH]12 Weeks Salary[/TH]
Devin McCourty |
9,000,000 |
6,882,353 |
6,352,941 |
Dont'a Hightower |
7,000,000 |
5,352,941 |
4,941,176 |
Kyle Van Noy |
4,250,000 |
3,250,000 |
3,000,000 |
Michael Bennett |
3,000,000 |
2,294,118 |
2,117,647 |
Duron Harmon |
2,500,000 |
1,911,765 |
1,764,706 |
James White |
2,500,000 |
1,911,765 |
1,764,706 |
Lawrence Guy |
2,400,000 |
1,835,294 |
1,694,118 |
Danny Shelton |
2,030,955 |
1,553,083 |
1,433,615 |
Elandon Roberts |
2,025,000 |
1,548,529 |
1,429,412 |
Josh Gordon |
2,025,000 |
1,548,529 |
1,429,412 |
Jason McCourty |
2,000,000 |
1,529,412 |
1,411,765 |
Nate Ebner |
2,000,000 |
1,529,412 |
1,411,765 |
Joe Thuney |
1,995,000 |
1,525,588 |
1,408,235 |
Rex Burkhead |
1,750,000 |
1,338,235 |
1,235,294 |
Matthew Slater |
1,600,000 |
1,223,529 |
1,129,412 |
Phillip Dorsett |
1,500,000 |
1,147,059 |
1,058,824 |
Ben Watson |
1,108,824 |
847,924 |
782,699 |
Patrick Chung |
1,100,000 |
841,176 |
776,471 |
Brandon Bolden |
1,000,000 |
764,706 |
705,882 |
Julian Edelman |
1,000,000 |
764,706 |
705,882 |
Marcus Cannon |
1,000,000 |
764,706 |
705,882 |
Stephon Gilmore |
1,000,000 |
764,706 |
705,882 |
For example, let’s say that the Patriots wish to Diggs for Peterson whose 2019 salary is $8.9 million. One way to do so would be to include
Devin McCourty‘s $9-million salary and $400,000 in 46-man active roster bonuses in the trade.
Please note that since there are a good number of teams with more cap space than the Patriots, the Vikings would probably prefer to trade Diggs without first paying him a signing bonus.
The below table shows the cap hits of thirteen possible trade targets.
[TH]Player[/TH]
[TH]2019 Cash[/TH]
[TH]This Week's Cap Hit[/TH]
[TH]Next Week's Cap Hit[/TH]
A.J. Green |
11,976,000 |
9,158,118 |
8,453,647 |
Larry Fitzgerald |
11,000,000 |
8,411,765 |
7,764,706 |
Trent Williams |
10,850,000 |
8,297,059 |
7,658,824 |
Emmanuel Sanders |
10,150,000 |
7,761,765 |
7,164,706 |
Stefon Diggs |
8,900,000 |
6,805,882 |
6,282,353 |
Jordan Reed |
7,858,500 |
6,053,559 |
5,586,699 |
Cameron Brate |
7,000,000 |
5,352,941 |
4,941,176 |
Mohammed Sanu |
6,250,000 |
4,588,235 |
4,235,294 |
Vernon Davis |
4,856,250 |
3,750,368 |
3,458,272 |
Danny Amendola |
4,437,500 |
3,437,500 |
3,171,875 |
Jalen Ramsey |
3,634,227 |
2,779,115 |
2,565,337 |
Devante Parker |
3,500,000 |
2,895,221 |
2,658,088 |
Kyle Rudolph |
1,750,000 |
1,525,735 |
1,407,169 |
Alex Erickson |
1,475,000 |
1,145,588 |
1,056,985 |
OJ Howard |
1,473,624 |
1,126,889 |
1,040,205 |
Tyler Eifert |
1,000,000 |
764,706 |
705,882 |
Jason Sanders |
570,000 |
435,882 |
402,353 |
Tyler Eifert and
Jason Sanders all can be easily acquired by the Patriots without any transactions.
Alex Erickson and
Kyle Rudolph could be acquired and the Patriots could wait until later this season to create the cap space needed to operate for the rest of the regular season. That way, the Patriots would be pushing a smaller amount of signing bonus into the future.
Trading for
A.J. Green,
Larry Fitzgerald,
Emmanuel Sanders, Diggs,
Jordan Reed,
Cameron Brate,
Mohammed Sanu,
Vernon Davis,
Danny Amendola,
Jalen Ramsey,
Trent Williams or
Kyle Rudolph would require one or more of the previously mentioned moves.
I currently have the Patriots with around $2.8 million in cap space. That is probably more than enough to account for the following current cap responsibilities:
1. The signing of
Jordan Richards to the 53-man roster. If signed to a Minimum Salary Benefit deal his minimum cap number is $493,235
2. The signing of
Kelvin McKnight to the practice squad. His minimum cap number is $104,000 (thirteen weeks times $8,000).
3. Earned NLTBE (Not Likely to Be Earned) 46-man active roster bonuses. These bonuses are the only NTLBE incentives that hit the current year’s cap when earned. As you can see below, the Patriots could lose $875,000 in cap space if the 7 players are active for every game the rest of the year. To illustrate this, since Julian Edelman was not active for any game in 2017, in 2018 the Patriots lost $31,250 in cap space every Tuesday on the NFLPA public salary cap page.
[TH]Totals[/TH]
[TH]875,000[/TH]
[TH]Player[/TH]
[TH]NLTBE 46-man roster bonus amount[/TH]
Rex Burkhead |
250,000 |
Marcus Cannon |
187,500 |
Shaq Mason |
125,000 |
Julian Edelman |
125,000 |
John Simon |
109,375 |
Patrick Chung |
50,000 |
Danny Shelton |
28,125 |
4. The Patriots are certain to place more players on injured reserve before the end of the regular season. Replacing those players will take up cap space. For example, let us presume the Patriots place another player on IR sometime this week and they then fill his spot on the 53-man roster with a rookie. That rookie will have a cap number of $378,529 as it is very likely that his yearly salary will be the minimum of $495,000.
5.) If the Patriots choose to extend a player who is making the minimum salary (
Adam Butler,
Ted Karras), the extension can only increase that player’s 2019 cap number, since his prorated signing bonus will now be part of his 2019 cap number.
6.) If Antonio Brown files a grievance about his unpaid 2019 salary amount of $750,000 40 percent of that ($300,000) will then be subtracted from the Patriots salary cap. If the Pats win the grievance, they will receive a $300,000 credit on their 2020 salary cap.
SUMMARY
The Patriots have enough cap space for the current roster but not enough if the Patriots acquire a player with a large 2019 cash number. That would require a lot of hoop-jumping, and I have a hard time seeing them doing that.
For example, if the Patriots did want to trade for Diggs, the following would have to be done to fit his $6,282,353 under the cap next week (I’m not including a player swap has never done a cap swap like that):
- Extend Devin McCourty by one year (Cap space created: $3,085,588)
- Extend Van Noy (Cap space created: $1,350,000)
- Break-glass option: Convert Hightower’s salary (Cap space created: $2,320,882)
TOTAL: $6,756,440
Answering some logical follow-up questions:
Question from Twitter follower Pats POV (McGarvin): Good evening
@patscap I was wondering if you knew the rules regarding acquiring a player in the final year of their deal via a trade whose base salary exceeds the acquiring team’s cap before an extension. Ex: Team has $7M in cap and player’s base salary is $8.7M would the team be allowed to acquire the said player if an extension was reached alongside the trade? If an extension is reached before the trade is formally announced that reduces player’s cap hit to $3M is it allowed? Or would the player’s salary have to already be under the cap before the trade?
Answer: The team would have to first create cap space. As an example, in 2007,
Tom Brady converted salary into a signing bonus in order to make room for
Randy Moss. Let’s continue to use Diggs as an example. The Patriots could create more cap space on the 3rd and then trade for him on the 4th of October. On the 5th they could then restructure his deal.
Question: Do the Patriots have to place an injured player on Injured Reserve right away?
Answer: No, they could leave him on the 53-man roster and not have him active. This way they do not have to pay his replacement.
Question: How much cap space is Antonio Brown taking up?
Answer: Five million. It consists of:
$4,500,000 – signing bonus proration of his $9,000,000 signing bonus
$250,000 – signing bonus proration of his $500,000 46-man roster bonuses. Because Brown’s deal was signed after the start of the regular season, his roster bonuses were treated like a signing bonus.
$125,000 – two weeks salary
$125,000 – termination pay
Question: Can the Patriots trade a player on Injured Reserve to create cap space?
Answer: Yes, they can. Ever since 2018 the trading of players on IR is allowed.
Question: Can the Patriots restructure the player’s contract after trading for him?
Answer: Yes, they can.
From
Twitter follower Chewy: Sorry if you already answered this. If Gronk unretires (which I doubt), what would the contract and cap situation be? Thx! Love your acct!
Answer: If
Rob Gronkowski decides to un-retire during the regular season, his cap number would be $9 million divided by 17 times the number of weeks remaining in the season plus $46,875 times the remaining number of games. As Bedard illustrated in
here, the deadline to unretire is Week 13.
Week 5 – $7,444,853
Week 6 – $6,868,566
Week 7 – $6,292,279
Week 8 – $5,715,993
Week 9 – $5,139,706
Week 10 – $4,610,294
Week 11 – $4,034,007
Week 12 – $3,457,721
Week 13 – $2,881,434
Question: What is your current Patriots 2019 salary cap space number?
Answer:
Active Contracts |
74 |
Projected League Cap |
188,200,000 |
Plus Prior Year Carryover |
3,173,423 |
Plus Adjustment |
5,640,675 |
Equals Adjusted Cap Number |
197,014,098 |
Minus Cap Commitment |
155,345,287 |
Minus Dead Money |
21,981,663 |
Minus Medical |
14,269,896 |
Minus Practice Squad |
2,096,059 |
Equals Estimated Cap Space |
3,321,193 |
The 75 players include 16 of 22 SB LIII starters, 29 of 53 SB LIII active players, and 3 of 13 players who were on IR/NFI.