Dead cap is a phrase NFL fans have become accustomed to hearing and using in recent years. The salary cap impact of it can be known the season before. There’s more than dead cap that impacts the bottom line though.
Salary Cap Impact of 2024 on 2025 Jets
There are two things about contract that impact the future of a team’s salary cap situation: prorated signing bonuses and not likely to-be earned incentives.
When a player has a signing bonus, it is prorated for the life of the contract. When he is cut, the remaining bonus proration accelerates into the year he is cut. That is if it’s before June 1. If he is cut after June 1, that season’s proration is all that counts for that season, and the following season, all proration is accelerated.
When it comes to not likely to be earned incentives, those are incentives that weren’t achieved in the previous season. Those incentives don’t count against that year’s cap. However, if they are earned, they do count against the following season’s cap.
Let’s take a look at all of the potential money the Jets could lose in 2025.
Aaron Rodgers
The Rodgers trade to the Jets came with a reworked deal. The deal had two guaranteed option bonuses (which are treated like signing bonuses). They were for $35 million each. He will have three prorated years left on the 2023 bonus and four on this season. If he retires, that will result in a $49 million dead cap hit.
He also has a third option bonus on his contract the Jets can choose to exercise. That would forward a larger dead cap hit to 2026 and would create a $23.5 million cap hit.
Tyron Smith
Smith might actually have the second biggest hit to the Jets cap in 2025. His contact has a $4 million signing bonus, and according to Over the Cap (via @TexansCap), the $13.5 million in incentives are NLTBE.
If you have a Premium sub to OTC, you can view the incentive details in the Advanced Player Summary section. Ex: pic.twitter.com/cBnTr9ey18
— TexansCap (@TexansCap) May 25, 2024
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With four void years, his prorated signing bonus would result in a $3.6 million dead cap hit. However, there’s something called an adjustment. Adjustments to a team’s cap number are made based on earned NLTBE incentives and LTBE incentives that aren’t. If Smith were to earn all of his incentives, a loss of $13.5 million would result. In the end, the total loss of cap space for Smith would be $17.1 million
Remaining players
There are five other players with void years resulting in a dead cap hit for next season.
| Player | Dead Cap Number |
| Mike Williams | $5,876,000 |
| D.J. Reed | $4,620,000 |
| Javon Kinlaw | $4,400,000 |
| Tyler Conklin | $1,950,000 |
| Wes Schweitzer | $900,000 |
| Total | $17,746,000 |
Current potential loss and how to avoid it
As of today, if Rodgers retires and Smith hits all of his incentives, it could result in a loss of $83,846,000 of the 2025 cap. If players are extended before the contracts void, though, this large number can be avoided. Extensions would help keep the prorated bonuses from acceleration.
That being said, the Jets are in win-now mode. They had to do everything to win this year, including the potential of something like that. If they do win the Super Bowl, one year of salary cap hell is worth it, in the long run. That’s why it’s win-now.
Main Photo: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
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