You are correct.
But I think that is what @stephenboyd57 was getting at by saying that a team has 5 years to play with when managing a contract. Even if it is a 1 year contract.
Your point on the acceleration is valid.
That is why I say Brad is using void years wisely with this roster. Using void years on young players that you plan to retain is key. If void years are used on a bunch of players that are underperforming it could get ugly.
Either you release the underperforming player and get hit with the acceleration or you hang on to the player longer than the coaching staff would like.
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Yeah, you got it.
The player is not being paid in the future, those would be “guarantees”. The “void years” are where the money he’s already been paid is being applied to the team’s cap.
As soon as he’s off the team, though, those years all accelerate into the current year. If a guy had two void years (2025 and 2026) and 2024 was his last year, the team’s cap is being charged for both of those years in 2025. If he’s gone from the roster, they’re on the hook for true “dead money”.
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Got it! You guys rock. Definitely a delicate balance of when to use void years or not.
Yes, I was surprised this wasn’t mentioned yet. This is why it’s hard for some teams to move guys who have signed huge signing bonuses that have been spread out into void years. As soon as the contract with the team ends, all the remaining dead cap accelerates into that year. (Looking at you Myles Garrett)
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Does that money (for cap purposes) accelerate when/if the player leaves the team, and if so, can it be spread over 2 years based on Post June 1st designations?
So if Player X has 3 void years at the end of his contract and each void year has a proration of $500,000 do you carry that $500,000 for each of those 3 void years as dead money, or does it immediately accelerate to $1,500,000 the year he leaves the team?
@SirLion brought up the key here…
the Vikings are no longer taking cap hits for Davenport because the void years accelerate onto rhe cap once a player’s contract is voided.
The 4 void years helped lower the cap number for 2023…
but Davenport then counted $6.8 million against the Vikings’ 2024 cap (4 x $1.7 million).
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Yep. Roger that. Makes sense now. Void years sound good in theory but the acceleration can definitely backfire. Taco Bell style 
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I think …. This is a good view of 2024 specifically…
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Purdy signing is gonna add to their future woes.
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The Lions will eat some dead cap money on void years in a few contracts:
- Halapoulivaati Vaitai – $3.84 million
- Romeo Okwara – $3.5 million
- C.J. Gardner-Johnson – $2 million
- Graham Glasgow – $1.47 million
- Emmanuel Moseley – $1 million
- Teddy Bridgewater – $500,000
That’s kinda a depressing list from last season.
It’s not even that they’re cheap, it’s simply that all of Mike Brown’s wealth comes from owning the Bengals, so he simply doesn’t have additional cash to give players contracts like these with large up front payments / meet the escrow requirements of guaranteed contracts. If they want to re-sign Higgins, Chase and Hendrickson this offseason, they’ll need to find probably $200 million over and above their normal payroll to cover the cost of up front signing bonus payments and the money they need to escrow to cover guarantees. Brown / the Bengals don’t have $200 million lying around like the Walton family does so offering these contracts is a very different proposition for them.
It’s the same for most teams with legacy owners who acquired their teams relatively cheaply in the 60s and 70s. Owners like Brown, Clark Hunt and Mark Davis live off the team, it’s their sole or major source of income / wealth, which is why the NFL allowed sales of small stakes in teams because it frees up cash for the owners to spend on their teams.
It would be interesting to know how much of the Ford family fortune is available to Sheila.
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What happens is the contract voids before the start of free agency. This is important for the player as it will give him a chance to negotiate a contract early so that he can a better contract.
June 1 designation is when you cut someone at or around the start of UFA and treat them as if they were released on June 1 for cap purposes.
They are different, and you can’t prorate the cap charges from a voided contract to two years. Teams in the past have renegotiated the void year and then cut the player in order to spread out the cap charges over two years (most of the charges will go to the following season). The Saints have done this with several players (including Brees when he retired, if I recall correctly).
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It’s like totaling your car and insurance only pays you enough to cover 3/4 of the loan balance.
Payments but the car is dead.
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Definitely not the splash you want to be making at free agency time, lol.
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Yes, this is true, but these are NFL teams with the ability to borrow an almost unlimited amount of money.
Every team is worth billions and have revenue certainty with the tv contracts and cost certainty with the salary cap.
It’s just a matter of how much a team wants to be leveraged.
So we can call it accounting principal, conservative management or being cheap.
I have a friend who earns well over a million dollars per year and has perfect credit but only buys things with cash because he doesn’t like paying interest.
He says he is conservative, but we all joke that he is cheap.
He can actually leverage his good credit and use the banks money and never pay interest.
I don’t think the other NFL teams are placing hundreds of millions of their owners money in escrow accounts for NFL salaries.
They are using the value of their franchises and having banks or other financial institutions fund the escrow accounts.
The Bengals can do that as well.
They choose not to.
Void years ultimately are a cap manipulation tool. I see their uses for when you are in your championship window and you need to get one or two of your finishing pieces. I worry about the usage when rebuilding, but that is just me.
Others have pointed to how some other teams have manipulated the cap through other means. It isn’t like there is any shortage of ways to do it. But like all things, at some point the money is going to hit the cap and it must be managed.
I feel sorry for Cleveland fans in this. Huge bills coming due and you didn’t even get to enjoy the expected fruits of the investments.
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Borrowing that kind of money isn’t cheap. If you borrow $200 million and have to pay say $40 million in interest over five years, then that has a significant impact on your own personal finances. If you live off taking say $15 million out of the team every year to fund your lifestyle, that $15 million becomes $7 million a year for those five years.
For businesses, borrowing is expected to generate additional income, whereas in the case of an NFL team, this borrowing won’t necessarily generate any additional income to cover the interest. The team would have to be very successful to make that up in merchandise sales. Even when you consider that up front payments make future payrolls smaller, there’s still $40 million going to the bank in interest that isn’t available to the team / owner.
If you have a cash pile, you can become the bank and lend the money to the team, and pocket the $40 million in interest as clear personal profit.
Well said - great post. I agree with the logic and points made. The void year method is certainly a popular one for several teams, and I can understand why that is the case.
I think the part I (still) disagree with is that eventually those debts are owed. Even with a rising cap, I think a team would be well-served financially to keep their dead money number as low as possible. Not middle of the road - but as close to $0 as possible at all times.
How can this be done?
Could the Lions have still retained their homegrown talent without adding the likes of CJGJ, Cam Sutton, DJ Reader, and/or Kevin Zeitler? Could they have survived without giving Vaitai, Romeo Okwara, Glasgow, and Mosely void years?
While it might seem like these are important names when it comes to the Lions success, I can’t help but wonder if they could have been just as successful without any of them.
When the Lions were patient and focused on developing their own talent, their own talent rose to the occasion and developed very nicely far more often than not. When you have a coaching staff capable of turning most players into good ones, I think you can “cut corners”, so to speak, by largely avoiding the FA market for higher tier (aka expensive) talent.
Doing so would mean there is no “impending doom season” that awaits the Lions a few seasons down the road when the bill finally becomes due, imo. That bill will always be waiting. For many of these teams, growing and waiting. Look how many of these teams will be firing their current regime and leaving the bill for the next one. A lot of those teams near the top are going to need to deal with 2-3 “dead” seasons where they’re basically just trying to get their cap situation fixed so they can’t start to become competitive again. For whatever reason, I just really don’t like that.
Having said that…
I can’t help but think there’s a healthy medium, and perhaps that’s exactly where the Lions are as you pointed out with them being one of the teams “in the middle”.
Great post - Thanks for the reply.
Very good post. Only thing I’d suggest is changing “debts owed” comment to “charges owed” because the debt is already paid.
I agree that you don’t want to rely on it too much. If we’re talking about cornerstone players that are also likely to see another contract where the two void years can be added again, you’re effectively keeping the guy at current market value while reducing the annual cost to below market.
Another thought is that if your void year strategy is coupled with early renewals, you’re saving in actual cash spent, too. Most of your contracts will end up looking team-friendly when you’re putting cash in the player’s hands early.
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