I love all the names people throw out. Crosby, Garett, Etc. but you have to look at the dead cap hit those teams have with those players.
You have to understand how void years work with dead cap.
Who got traded last year? Sweat and Chase Young. Sweat had an expiring contract and Chase was coming off a rookie contract that they didn’t pick up the 5th year option on. Those are people teams trade for picks.
Teams are not trading guys with $50m in dead cap unless you are giving them multiple 1st rounders and more. Like Garett, that is 2 1st round picks plus a 2nd and 5th and the browns would do the deal. Because they have to replace not only Garett on the roster but all Garetts money lost with cheap contracts. $50m in dead money equals 4 players on cheap contracts.
The cap is real. You can work around a lot of stuff but dead money is dead money.
So everyone needs to looks at players coming to the end of rookies deals, vets that have expiring contracts or vets with low dead money contracts.
It is overlooked, yes. Kind of like the Josh Hines-Allen payout of 35 mil this year in Jacksonville. They’re not paying the guy 35 mil on a contract renewal just to trade him 5 games into the season.
Not may DEs out there have a bunch of dead cap that wont go with them.
Those things can be negotiated.
Signing bonuses wont. But resurrecting can.
Also. Would they like to keep the player through the rebuild and spend $30-50m per year. Or trade them, get picks and only have 5-10m in dead cap on the books.
If Garrett is traded they have an $18 million dead cap hit this year and they would have like $25 million next year. That’s about what they would have if he was on the team. He has 2 years left on his deal. They won’t be good during that time so they can either get picks for him or risk having him walk. Crosby if traded now would be $5 million this year and another $5 million in 2025.
Cap hits can be moved around across the entire roster.
There is a reason the Broncos could cut Russ and take a $85 million dead cap last year…. because they already had to pay that cash.
Same with Garrett. Same with Crosby.
If a team decides they can’t win while a player is under contract… in that window of time… they are still better off moving that player and eating the “dead cap hit” now….
rather than paying NEW CASH to that player.
In this particular example… take an actual look at Crosby’s contract.
Trading Crosby today saves the Raiders $15.8 million in 2024 for the remainder of his 2024 salary. Raiders have already paid $8.7 million of his $24,500,000 salary.
His dead cap hit that is already not accounted for on the 2025 books… is $10.2 million for cap proration.
Therefore… the Raiders actually would SAVE a net $5.6 million against the cap by trading Crosby TODAY.
Russell Wilson was cut with $85M in dead cap including another $39M in cash given to him out the door.
Teams that use the void years, use them with their eyes wide open. There is going to be significant dead cap at some point in time, whether it’s this year with a trade or when he finally retires.
What most people don’t understand is that dead cap has to be recognized at some point, the timing can vary based on if the player’s contract expires, is traded or retires, but all that dead cap HAS to be recognized over the next couple of years.
The reason why the Browns probably won’t trade Garrett is because he’s a good player, not because of the potential dead cap hit.
Unless you change the parameters. On OTC, you can change the calculations for dead cap; cap savings to pre or post June 1 or Trades, pre or post June 1.
