A year after signing a huge extension Khalil Mack restructured his contract, which will give the Chicago Bears $11 million more in cap space
When the Chicago Bears signed Buster Skrine, which led to Bryce Callahan walking it was clear that this was a salary-related move. Callahan was going to get much more than Skrine and the Bears decided to take the lesser player at a much bigger discount.
While that was sensed to be a theme for the cash strapped Bears, they now enter day two of free agency with more cap space than they started free agency with.
The Chicago Bears re-worked Khalil Macks deal, creating $11 million in cap space.
Source: the Bears have created $11M of cap space by converting $13M of Khalil Mack's base salary & roster bonus into a signing bonus. Chicago positioning itself to make moves if desired...
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) March 12, 2019
The Bears now have about $25 million in cap space.
This does not mean that Mack is taking a pay cut. Quite the opposite actually. The Bears are giving Khalil Mack $13 million up front in the form of a bonus. This will take $13 million off of his salary cap hits and spread them equally across the remaining four years of his contract.
Mack is getting paid up front, but the Bears are taking cap hits on the back end.
The con to this deal is that if Mack is injured, cut or traded, he has a much bigger dead cap number. In most situations, we will not get that far, though.
Still, it is a small risk for big cap savings. The question is now that they saved more money, what are their options? Is Adrian Amos back in the mix? Are they going to add multiple depth names like Mike Davis? Or could this just be money used to extend their own?
We will see soon enough.