As of the second week of March, Kansas City Chiefs general manager Brett Wyche signed an 11-player contract for 2022 and completed a significant contract restructuring for defenseman Frank Clark. the unmistakable accident is that someone is paid a reasonable amount of money.
In most of these deals, which began with the placement of the franchise tag on Orlando Brown Jr.’s left footer on March 7, Veach stuck to form, taking every advantage possible (and sometimes thinking outside the box) to get the most out of everyone. dollar salary cap.
The most recent of those smart deals came Friday when Kansas City signed wide receiver Juju Smith-Shuster, who spent the first five years of his NFL career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. A year ago, Veach made a big effort to sign Smith-Schuster for the 2021 season, eventually offering an $8 million one-year contract that included $3 million in promotions. Despite an offer from the Chiefs—and an even better offer from the Baltimore Ravens (reportedly $9 million with $4 million in incentives)—Smith-Schuster decided to accept an $8 million contract offer from the Steelers. “.
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At the time, many speculated that he simply wanted to stay in Pittsburgh, where he wouldn’t have to compete with Kansas City tight end Travis Kelsey and wide receiver Tyreke Hill for goals; he was thought to have a better chance of a major contract after one more year with the Steelers.
But as it turned out, Pittsburgh was just offering more money. The contract was actually for the NFL a $1 million minimum base salary plus a $7 million signing bonus. But the Steelers would probably want that contract back; Smith-Schuster appeared in just five regular season games before suffering a shoulder injury that kept him out of the game until the team’s Wild Card playoff run against the Chiefs. Worse, Pittsburgh spread that signing bonus over four seasons that can be waived starting in 2022, so when his contract wasn’t renewed, $5.6 million of that bonus was accelerated when calculating that season’s salary cap. .
Given that backdrop, when news broke that Veach had signed the wide receiver to a one-year, $10.75 million contract, it was reasonable to wonder if the Chiefs should have worked harder to get Smith-Schuster a year ago; its price has risen. But late Friday afternoon, NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo reported that the deal was made for only $3 million, with the rest coming from incentives..
That #leadersThe deal with WR JuJu Smith-Schuster is around $3 million in base value, with the rest at a maximum value of $10.75 million. @rap sheet the income is reported in the form of incentives, the sources say.
— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) March 18, 2022
On Saturday, the full details of the contract became known. Smith-Schuster again plays for the NFL’s minimum wage of $1.035 million and also received a $1.455 million signing bonus. His promotions include a $250,000 practice bonus and a $30,000 per game bonus for each game he is on the active roster. This can add up to $510,000 ($30,000 times 17 games).
But here’s where it gets interesting.
Under salary cap rules, Incentives Not Earned (NLTBE) are based only on a player’s previous season. Because Smith-Schuster only played in five regular season games in 2021, only $150,000 of that bonus can count towards the cap this season; if earned, NLTBE incentives are deducted from the next season’s pay cap. While the exact details of the remaining NLTBE promotions are unknown, they are likely to be easily achievable if Smith-Schuster plays a full season – and exceeds the production level that a player like Byron Pringle has done in 2021.
All this adds up to the fact that by 2021 the ceiling will be even lower than Garafolo reported: only $ 2.89 million, and the rest of the incentives (if they were earned) are taken into account in 2023. If Smith-Schuster gets it all, he is likely to be the threat that Sammy Watkins represented the team in 2018, and the Chiefs offense should be significantly more effective. In that case, $7.86 million of potential dollars for 2023 would seem cheap in price.
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But Wych made other smart moves during free will. Justin Reed’s three-year, $31.5 million new insurance deal includes $20 million guaranteed, half of which is a signing bonus. That means his cap for 2021 is just $4.55 million, with only $3.5 million of dead money remaining during the third year of the contract. The rest is guaranteed for the second year of the deal, which means if Reed fails, the Chiefs could easily leave after two seasons.
In addition, Veach continues to make frequent use of the 2020 Collective Bargaining Veterans Wage Benefit (VSB) provision, which allows teams to pay long-term veterans their regular minimum wage but have a cap that is the same as that of a player. with just two credited seasons. The Chiefs had six such contracts in 2021, saving over $2 million on limit. Two such contracts with the VSB — one with defenseman Michael Burton and the other with offensive lineman Andrew Wylie — are already signed up for 2022, adding more than $1.6 million to the team’s limit. There will be more.
conclusions
In retrospect, it’s reasonable to criticize some of the contracts Veach signed during his first two years as the team’s CEO. It seemed to many fans that the likes of Clarke and recently released midfielder Anthony Hitchens were not living up to their expensive contracts. While the Chiefs likely found the two deals more befitting of these players’ contributions than the fans, the criticism was still not unfounded.
But since then, Veach’s movements on the salary cap have become sharper and sharper. A brilliant (and unorthodox) contract with quarterback Patrick Mahomes was just the beginning; since then, some of the same mechanisms that made it easy to use this contract as a source of covering funds have been used in other transactions.
According to Spotrac, 13 NFL teams currently have a dead cap in excess of $20 million. Kansas City now holds less than a third of that: $6.5 million. It’s one thing not to have enough space in a hat, because you need to keep a lot of dead money under the cap. Not enough money on the ceiling is another matter, because the money is used for its intended purpose: to pay team players.