Daniel Jones has signed 2 yr 88m contract

[Dam8610]

Originally Posted by sherck

Well, yes, if DJ plays both years of his 2-year salary.

No if he only plays one year and then the Colts cut him. Then ALL of his pro-rated signing bonus will accellerate into 2027.


As AlwaysSunnyInIndy said, they are a cap tool that teams are using in order to extend the cap hit of signing bonus.

In this case, instead of chunking the $44m signing bonus into only two cap accounting buckets of $22m for 2026 and $22m for 2027, they instead added three "void" years and now split the pro-rated signing bonus into five buckets of $8.8m for 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030.

If DJ only plays 1 year of his contract, then the rest of the pro-rated signing bonus ($35.2m) will then accellerate into 2027 as he is now off contract.

If DJ plays both years of his contract, then the rest of the pro-rated signing bonus ($26.4m) will accellerate into 2028 as he is now off contract.

If the Colts re-sign or extend DJ past 2027, then those void years chuncks of pro-rated signing bonuses will still hit in their appropriate year ALONG WITH new pro-rated signing bonus from the new contract.

It is a replacement for signing players to a 5-year contact with both sides KNOWING FULL WELL that it is really only a 2-year contact because it balloons so much that no NFL team will be willing to pay years 3-5.

The player's union sought it as a tool because they wanted to differenate between "real" big contracts (5-year, $250m for QBs) and fake $250m contracts that everyone knew would never get paid out just to move more cap hit from the signing bonus into the future.

And, yes, the Eagles have been using void years for a good decade now in order to keep pushing the cap hits forward into a future where the salary cap keeps growing. Some think that it is the new way to manage caps and if you are good enough at it, then the bills "never" become due.

While I think it a good tool to use here or there, adding void years to almost every veteran contact you sign, IMO, is not the best plan.

Mickey Loomis used it for a decade to completely flaunt the salary cap until the team got bad, then he just ate the charges. Howie Roseman has been structuring everything to come due in 2029, when the new TV deal is signed, which is expected to cause a massive cap jump. I think if managed correctly, void years are a tool that can effectively get around tge salary cap, provided the team owner is liquid enough to support the strategy.