So…for all of us uneducated people…this means? (If you would be kind enough to educate us)
I think it’s years where the player gets paid, but isn’t on the team.
It’s how GMs behave like drunken sailors and is a terrible maneuver that everyone here is obsessed with
Well, void years are years in which a player isn’t on the team. This list shows how much cap dollars are assigned to a team that won’t have a player on their roster.
i.e. it’s like having a cap charge for Barry Sanders put having him standing on the sideline rooting for the Lions instead of playing.
Here’s a pretty good explanation I found.
It’s living on a no interest credit card.
This has always been a great way to understand what and how void years work.
What about a comparison of all the years since Brad took over?
Would love to see it and that’s it’s keeps going down
Philly at $390.4 million, when will this time bomb explode? Maybe I still don’t fully understand how this works, but them and the SF numbers are through the roof compared to all other teams.
Most cap dollars currently in void years:
- PHI (duh): $390.4M
- SF: $204.1M
- CLE: $187.5M
- NO: $112.1M
- JAX:$106.55M
- NYJ: $87.6M
- MIA: $70.6M
- DAL: $62.755M
- TB: $56.1M
- DET: $52.1M
- BAL: $50.8M
- HOU: $47.09M
- MIN: $47.08M
- DEN: $40.3M
Similar to the deferrals in baseball I believe. MLB can defer money decades though. I believe there is a strict limit in the nfl in terms of void years?
so, does this mean none of that at all counts against the cap?
The question I have always wondered is, what happens when that can is kicked so far, a team cannot field a 53 man roster without going over the cap? New Orleans wasn’t that far off, they pretty much had to restructure every single dollar they could to stay under. Philly may be even worse off than they were 3-4 years ago in a couple more seasons.
Is this scenario not possible? Can teams just tack on more void years to further spread out cap hits even when their base salary is the vet minimum?
It’s basically locked in future dead cap. They’ve spent the money but the cap hasn’t counted it yet.
Since a bonus can be prorated over a maximum of five seasons, the highest number of void years that can be added to a contract is five minus the number of years left on the contract the player is currently on.
Players have to be released or not retained when their contract expires.
Good players are lost because cap space is being used by dead cap of players long gone.
Thank you. 5 years is still a lot to play with.
$52.1m - Wowza. That’s a superstar franchise QB’s annual salary the Lions are on the hook for at some point in the future. Could have had a lot of quality players for several years for that number.
Props to the GM’s who figured out how to be in the bottom 20% on this list while still putting a winning team on the field. (BUF, PIT, KC, ATL, LAC, CIN)
I’ll never be a fan of this. It ultimately leads to lost seasons, which typically come after the current regime is kicked to the curb. The new one gets to basically spend a year clearing dead cap.
We all remember the 2021 season, I’m sure.
Well, it’s technically 4, as you could sign a player to a 1-year deal and have four void years.
But I’m pretty sure that the way it works is that void money spread over multiple years only works while the player is under contract. Once the active years are done, all of the future void years accelerate.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
With the use of void years, a team can sign a player, like the Vikings signed Marcus Davenport, to a one year $13 million dollar deal with just a $6 million cap hit in year one followed by $1.7 million in void years each of the following four years.
The Vikes still getting screwed for signing Davenport.
Actually the Lions are in pretty good shape as one of the teams in the middle.
That $52M is not all in one season. It is spread out over the next 3-4 years.
It has allowed Brad to extend Goff and ALL of HIS good young home grown draft picks and still be well under the cap for 2025.
Howie in Philly uses it to extreme and he has been in 2 Super Bowls and won one.
The Bengals don’t believe in using them because either they are cheap or because of accounting principal (which one do you believe).
The Chiefs don’t use them because they have to manage Mahomes floating contract and it becomes difficult with a bunch of dead cap caused by void years on random players.
To me it depends on your roster and I think Holmes is using void years appropriately
The Lions void year exposure will increase when they extend Hutch and Kerby this offseason.
It is the primary means for keeping and extending all this young talent.
So if we want to win a SB, gotta go a bajillion dollars over in void years.
The Cincy Reds have been paying Ken Griffey Jr a million dolllars a year for the last 15 something years. Not sure when that’s over.