Thanks for the explanation. He certainly can help minimize these cap hits through the structure of extensions however.
I think that the issue many miss is that restructuring doesn't save anything. Example is Watson, the Browns didn't save anything structuring his contract the way they did. He is going to get paid 230M no matter what. So, Berry cuts 36M from year one and everybody is jumping for joy but that 36M still has to be applied to the cap sometime. Right now, it's years 2-5 and that cannot be changed so at a minimum, Watson is showing a 9M prorated bonus for those years. If Berry does the exact same thing again this off season, the prorated bonus would jump to 18M per season with the 5th year being 9M when Watson is not under contract. To put that in perspective, doing that again for 2023 would mean that Watson would only have a cap hit again in 2023 of 10M but in 2024, that cap hit now would be 64M and the same for 2025 & 2026.
Why would anybody think it saves money?
Also, signing bonuses have been prorated over the length of the contract for many years.
You are acting like this is something new. It isn't. Quit acting like this is some big deal. It isn't. All teams do this. Watson has his money, or at least a large portion. Whatever is paid out is then written off in equal amounts against the cap over the length of the contract.
Why do you keep harping on this?
