Chicago Bears current cap situation and how they can fix it
By Joseph Herff
The Chicago Bears can open up more cap space with contract restructures
The biggest way the Saints open up money is through restructures. A contract restructure is not a pay cut as many think. Basically, a team restructures the contract by converting base salary and other bonuses to a signing bonus. The signing bonus is paid out in a lump sum and accounted for on the remaining years of the contract rather than the current season.
Essentially, this pushes money back and the Saints basically rely on the idea that each season the cap space is going to increase. This season caused them more trouble as the cap space actually decreased due to COVID. So, the Bears can do this with plenty of players. Here are some of the prime candidates to do it with:
- Khalil Mack, OLB — $12.9 million
- Kyle Fuller, CB — $9 million
- Robert Quinn, OLB — $8.7 million
- Eddie Jackson, S — $6.8 million
- Charles Leno, OT — $6 million
- Cody Whitehair, OG/C — $4.9 million
- Eddie Goldman, DT — $3.2 million
- Nick Foles, QB — $2 million
- Danny Trevathan — $2.6 million
These obviously all won’t happen. These are just the prime candidates that would garner the Bears the most amount of cap space for the 2021 offseason. If the Bears potentially restructured every one of these players, the Bears would have $29 million in cap space for this offseason, plenty to add Russell Wilson and more talent as you can restructure Wilson as well.
It has already been reported that the Bears are going to probably restructure both Whitehair and Jackson.