Many here think that dead money applies only if a player is released or traded. THIS IS FALSE. Dead Money is simply money that has already been paid to the player and has yet to be accounted for in the cap. DEAD MONEY IS A CAP HIT REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE PLAYER IS RETAINED, RELEASED, OR TRADED.
If a player is released or traded, dead money from future years, if any, will be accelerated into the current year, but that means it is cleared from future cap hits. Each team can use the post 6/1 designation on two players who are released or traded to prevent the future year hits from being accelerated. Any player actually released or traded after 6/1 is also not subject to acceleration.
Example: Jamal Adams
year, cap hit, salary+bonuses, prorate bonuses, dead money, cap savings, dead money post 6/1, cap savings post 6/1
2021, 5.0, 1.0, 4.0
2022, 9.1, 2.0, 7.1
2023, 11.5, 1.1, 10.4
2024, 26.9, 16.5, 10.4, 20.8, 6.1, 10.4, 16.5
2025, 27.9, 17.5, 10.4, 17.5
In 2021 he signed a contract with a 1.0 salary and a 20.0 signing bonus. The signing bonus was prorated to the cap over the life of the contract. So 5 year contract = 4.0/yr of dead money being created at signing.
In 2022, he was restructured. The dead money for the remaining 4 years was increased by 3.1/year by converting 12.4 of his 2022 salary to a prorated bonus. This increased the dead money to 7.1/yr for the remaining 4 years.
Most dead money is created using signing bonuses and using restructures to shift cap to future years. It is simply borrowing from the future cap to spend it now. Almost all other dead money you will see comes from releasing or trading a player who has guaranteed salary remaining on the future years of his contract. This is where the majority of the dead money came from when RW was traded.
They restructured Jamal again in 2023. Three years in a row they pushed his salary, and that of many others, forward - borrowing against future cap. Jamal now has 20.8 in dead money for prior years payments.
The thing is, that money hits the cap whether he is here or not. DEAD MONEY IS SUNK COST. Nothing you can do changes that. When evaluating whether a player is to be released or traded, the ONLY relevant factor is whether you can expect enough future on-field production to PAY THE SALARY. if JA is kept, the only cost to the team (both in $ and cap) is his 16.5 salary. The actual cap hit is irrelevant. If he is released/traded with post 6/1, the only cap savings to the team is his salary. The cap hits from dead money still hit the cap.
Now we come to the ugly part. The cap situation is much worse than many think because PCJS have increasingly used signing bonuses and restructures to borrow from future available cap. They've been using way too many restructures:
player, 2024 salary+bonus, dead money 2024, total dead money
Geno, 23.5, 8.7, 17.4
Jamal, 16.5, 10.4, 20.8
Lockett, 17.0, 9.9, 19.8
DK, 13.0, 11.5, 23.0
Diggs, 11.5, 10.3, 10.3
Dre'Mont, 11.5, 6.7, 13.3
Dissly, 7.0, 3.1, 3.1
Nwosu, 15.0, 6.5, 13.0
Love, 5.6, 2.4, 2.4
Spoon, 2.2, 5.0, 15.1
Reed, 4.5, 1.5, 1.5
Cross, 2.6, 3.2, 6.8
Myers, 3.6, 1.9, 5.7
Bellore, 2.8, 1.2, 1.2
Dickson, 2.5, 1.3, 1.3
JSN, 1.4, 1.9, 5.7
Mafe, 1.5, 0.9, 1.8
KW, 1.5, 0.8, 1.7
Hall, 1.2, 0.9, 2.7
Eskridge, 1.9, 0.4, 0.4
Charbs, 1.6, 0.5, 1.5
Lucas 1.2, 0.3, 0.6
note: guaranteed salaries for rookie contracts are not included even though they are, technically, dead money. This is only absorbed if the player is released and the probability is low.
I stopped there because the remaining players have minimal individual impact. The total impact if all were released would be about equal to Jamal.
Total dead money remainimg on all future years cap: 201.8
Total dead money to hit cap, 2024: 102.1
Estimated cap, 2024: 248.0
Cap available, exclusive of dead money: 145.9
Current cap available: -4.6
If the roster is stripped for cap savings, that leaves us:
player, (salary, etc), cap savings, post 6/1
QB: Geno Smith, (22.3), 13.8, 22.5
QB:
RB: Kenneth Walker
RB: Charbonnet
RB: McIntosh
WR: Metcalf, (13.0), 1.5, 13.0
WR: JSN
WR:Lockett, (15.3), 7.1, 17.0 post 6/1
WR: Bobo
WR: Young
WR: Eskridge, (1.5), 1.5
TE: Dissly, (7.0), 7.0
TE:
LT: Cross
LG:
OC: Olu
RG: Bradford
RT: Lucas
RT: Forsythe
IDL: Jones, (11.5), 4.8, 11.5
IDL:Mone, (5.9), 5.9
IDL: Young
IDL: Morris
EDGE: Nwosu
EDGE: Mafe
EDGE: Hall
EDGE:
ILB:
ILB:
ILB: Bellore, 2.8
S: Adams, (16.5) 6.1, 16.5 post 6/1
S: Diggs, (11.0), 11.0
S: Love (5.7), 5.7
S: Reed
S: Okada, 0.9
CB: Bryant
CB: Witherspoon
CB: Brown
CB: Woolen
CB: Whitaker, 0.8
K: Myers
P: Dickson
LS: Stoll
The cuts provide cap savings of 61.9, bringing the cap available to 57.3 to acquire what we need.
Starters needed: TE, LG, IDL (Young, Morris are rotation), Edge (Mafe, Hall are rotation), ILB, ILB, S (Love is OK, hope Reed is OK in heavy nickel).
Rotation/competition/high quality depth needed: QB, TE, OT, OG, OC, IDL, EDGE, ILB.
7 starters and 8 quality contributors are needed. This is the bare-bones minimum needed to field a competitive team with no real depth. Since the cap already includes 49 players, 11 players will be bumped and
add ~8.0 to the cap.
We also need ~7.0 for the rookie pool and ~10.0 for in-season injury replacements reserve. That leaves ~48.0 and 7 draft picks to get 15 quality contributors. The math is not good if you want any blue-chip FAs. A 10-15 highest paid Edge runs ~$20M/year. Don't even think about top-10. We need a starter and 1 quality rotation Edge. Same with IDL and they aren't much cheaper. Throw in OT, too.
It would be get the 15 needed for less so that we don't have total scrubs for depth. Every $ spent to improve depth players pays huge dividends when injuries start happening. Too many injuries + too many scrubs is a primary reason for 3-4 win teams.
Don't forget, JS will have plenty of opportunity to push cap forward with huge signing bonuses and restructures. But the Seahawks have already mortgaged $200M+ of their future cap. They'll still have $100M+ in 2025, plus whatever they add to it this year.
p.s. I couldn't find total dead money for teams listed anywhere so I did all this manually from OTC. I scanned the 31 other teams and Seahawks are somewhere around 23rd for future dead money. There's much worse teams, but Seahawks are not in a great place over the next couple of years.
If a player is released or traded, dead money from future years, if any, will be accelerated into the current year, but that means it is cleared from future cap hits. Each team can use the post 6/1 designation on two players who are released or traded to prevent the future year hits from being accelerated. Any player actually released or traded after 6/1 is also not subject to acceleration.
Example: Jamal Adams
year, cap hit, salary+bonuses, prorate bonuses, dead money, cap savings, dead money post 6/1, cap savings post 6/1
2021, 5.0, 1.0, 4.0
2022, 9.1, 2.0, 7.1
2023, 11.5, 1.1, 10.4
2024, 26.9, 16.5, 10.4, 20.8, 6.1, 10.4, 16.5
2025, 27.9, 17.5, 10.4, 17.5
In 2021 he signed a contract with a 1.0 salary and a 20.0 signing bonus. The signing bonus was prorated to the cap over the life of the contract. So 5 year contract = 4.0/yr of dead money being created at signing.
In 2022, he was restructured. The dead money for the remaining 4 years was increased by 3.1/year by converting 12.4 of his 2022 salary to a prorated bonus. This increased the dead money to 7.1/yr for the remaining 4 years.
Most dead money is created using signing bonuses and using restructures to shift cap to future years. It is simply borrowing from the future cap to spend it now. Almost all other dead money you will see comes from releasing or trading a player who has guaranteed salary remaining on the future years of his contract. This is where the majority of the dead money came from when RW was traded.
They restructured Jamal again in 2023. Three years in a row they pushed his salary, and that of many others, forward - borrowing against future cap. Jamal now has 20.8 in dead money for prior years payments.
The thing is, that money hits the cap whether he is here or not. DEAD MONEY IS SUNK COST. Nothing you can do changes that. When evaluating whether a player is to be released or traded, the ONLY relevant factor is whether you can expect enough future on-field production to PAY THE SALARY. if JA is kept, the only cost to the team (both in $ and cap) is his 16.5 salary. The actual cap hit is irrelevant. If he is released/traded with post 6/1, the only cap savings to the team is his salary. The cap hits from dead money still hit the cap.
Now we come to the ugly part. The cap situation is much worse than many think because PCJS have increasingly used signing bonuses and restructures to borrow from future available cap. They've been using way too many restructures:
player, 2024 salary+bonus, dead money 2024, total dead money
Geno, 23.5, 8.7, 17.4
Jamal, 16.5, 10.4, 20.8
Lockett, 17.0, 9.9, 19.8
DK, 13.0, 11.5, 23.0
Diggs, 11.5, 10.3, 10.3
Dre'Mont, 11.5, 6.7, 13.3
Dissly, 7.0, 3.1, 3.1
Nwosu, 15.0, 6.5, 13.0
Love, 5.6, 2.4, 2.4
Spoon, 2.2, 5.0, 15.1
Reed, 4.5, 1.5, 1.5
Cross, 2.6, 3.2, 6.8
Myers, 3.6, 1.9, 5.7
Bellore, 2.8, 1.2, 1.2
Dickson, 2.5, 1.3, 1.3
JSN, 1.4, 1.9, 5.7
Mafe, 1.5, 0.9, 1.8
KW, 1.5, 0.8, 1.7
Hall, 1.2, 0.9, 2.7
Eskridge, 1.9, 0.4, 0.4
Charbs, 1.6, 0.5, 1.5
Lucas 1.2, 0.3, 0.6
note: guaranteed salaries for rookie contracts are not included even though they are, technically, dead money. This is only absorbed if the player is released and the probability is low.
I stopped there because the remaining players have minimal individual impact. The total impact if all were released would be about equal to Jamal.
Total dead money remainimg on all future years cap: 201.8
Total dead money to hit cap, 2024: 102.1
Estimated cap, 2024: 248.0
Cap available, exclusive of dead money: 145.9
Current cap available: -4.6
If the roster is stripped for cap savings, that leaves us:
player, (salary, etc), cap savings, post 6/1
QB: Geno Smith, (22.3), 13.8, 22.5
QB:
RB: Kenneth Walker
RB: Charbonnet
RB: McIntosh
WR: Metcalf, (13.0), 1.5, 13.0
WR: JSN
WR:
WR: Bobo
TE: Dissly, (7.0), 7.0
TE:
LT: Cross
LG:
OC: Olu
RG: Bradford
RT: Lucas
RT: Forsythe
IDL: Jones, (11.5), 4.8, 11.5
IDL:
IDL: Young
IDL: Morris
EDGE: Nwosu
EDGE: Mafe
EDGE: Hall
EDGE:
ILB:
ILB:
S: Adams, (16.5) 6.1, 16.5
S: Love (5.7), 5.7
S: Reed
S: Okada, 0.9
CB: Bryant
CB: Witherspoon
CB: Brown
CB: Woolen
CB: Whitaker, 0.8
K: Myers
P: Dickson
LS: Stoll
The cuts provide cap savings of 61.9, bringing the cap available to 57.3 to acquire what we need.
Starters needed: TE, LG, IDL (Young, Morris are rotation), Edge (Mafe, Hall are rotation), ILB, ILB, S (Love is OK, hope Reed is OK in heavy nickel).
Rotation/competition/high quality depth needed: QB, TE, OT, OG, OC, IDL, EDGE, ILB.
7 starters and 8 quality contributors are needed. This is the bare-bones minimum needed to field a competitive team with no real depth. Since the cap already includes 49 players, 11 players will be bumped and
add ~8.0 to the cap.
We also need ~7.0 for the rookie pool and ~10.0 for in-season injury replacements reserve. That leaves ~48.0 and 7 draft picks to get 15 quality contributors. The math is not good if you want any blue-chip FAs. A 10-15 highest paid Edge runs ~$20M/year. Don't even think about top-10. We need a starter and 1 quality rotation Edge. Same with IDL and they aren't much cheaper. Throw in OT, too.
It would be get the 15 needed for less so that we don't have total scrubs for depth. Every $ spent to improve depth players pays huge dividends when injuries start happening. Too many injuries + too many scrubs is a primary reason for 3-4 win teams.
Don't forget, JS will have plenty of opportunity to push cap forward with huge signing bonuses and restructures. But the Seahawks have already mortgaged $200M+ of their future cap. They'll still have $100M+ in 2025, plus whatever they add to it this year.
p.s. I couldn't find total dead money for teams listed anywhere so I did all this manually from OTC. I scanned the 31 other teams and Seahawks are somewhere around 23rd for future dead money. There's much worse teams, but Seahawks are not in a great place over the next couple of years.
