The 49ers recently restructured the contracts of two offensive mainstays that cleared up a heap of cap space. According to ESPN’s Field Yates and Adam Schefter, both tight end George Kittle and fullback Kyle Juszczyk agreed to restructured contracts to help lessen their impact on the salary cap.
Charean Williams of NBC Sports provided us with some details on Kittle’s newly redone deal. The veteran tight end was set to have a base salary of $13.4MM with a cap hit of $21.96MM in 2024. Instead, the team converted $12.19MM of his base salary for 2024 into a signing bonus while adding one voidable year to the existing two already at the tail end of his contract. The move cleared up $9.75MM of space in the team’s salary cap.
While Schefter’s initial report claimed that the restructure for Juszczyk would free up approximately $1.75MM of cap space, a later report from Tom Pelissero of NFL Network laid out some details that would clear almost $4MM of cap space. The restructured deal will reportedly reduce his base salary in both 2024 and 2025, forming what is essentially now a two-year, $9.1MM contract. In exchange for the reduced pay, San Francisco gave Juszczyk $4MM of new guarantees.
Here are some details on other recent restructures from around the conference:
- We reported a restructured deal for Vikings safety Harrison Smith about a week and a half ago, and thanks to Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune, we have some details on the new contract. The restructure addressed the final two years of Smith’s contract, essentially giving him a two-year, $10.25MM deal with three void years at the end of the contract. Smith received $7MM of guaranteed money in the form of a signing bonus and will receive a per game active bonus of $30K for a potential season-total of $510K. The new contract reduces Smith’s cap number in 2024 by $11.9MM and reduces his 2025 cap impact by $15.5MM.
- The Seahawks cleared up some cap space by restructuring the contract of wide receiver D’Wayne Eskridge, according to Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times. It’s just a slight tweak for a player who was only slotted to make $1.47MM in the final year of his rookie deal. The restructure will open up about $500K of cap space for Seattle.
Bills HC Sean McDermott calls it ‘narrow-minded’ to criticize team for lack of Super Bowl
Ever since Josh Allen became the Buffalo Bills starting quarterback they have been one of the best teams in the NFL and a top Super Bowl contender every season. They just haven’t actually won it yet. Or been to one. Those two facts have led to some outside criticism of both the team and head coach Sean McDermott.
McDermott thinks that criticism is “narrow-minded” and explained why this weekend.
“I think like anything, when you talk about the Bills, whether it’s (quarterback) Josh (Allen), myself, our team, we’ve had so much success,” McDermott said, via NFL.com. “What’s left for Josh and for all of us is to take that one more step that we need to take.”
He went on to defend his quarterback, specifically.
“To say we haven’t had success or Josh hasn’t had success, I think would be kind of narrow-minded. It’s hard to win in the NFL, so you kind of regroup every year, and you take it one game at a time,” McDermott argued. “But we’re all looking for Josh to really be that face of the franchise, like he’s been, and continuing to evolve, like he’s always done.”
McDermott is correct that is hard to win in the NFL, especially playing in a conference that has Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson playing quarterback in it. There is also no shame in failing to win a Super Bowl over any five-year stretch because Super Bowls are rare and special events.
Teams like the Mahomes-led Chiefs and the Tom Brady-led New England Patriots that win multiple titles in a short period of time are the exception, not the rule. And they have a tendency to wreck the grading curve for everybody else in the NFL.
Even with that being the case, it is fair to wonder if the Bills have completely maximized their window with Allen. It is not just the fact that the team has not been to – or won – a Super Bowl. They have only been to one AFC Championship game (four years ago) and have lost home games in the divisional round each of the past two seasons. Including one in which they were completely dominated by the Cincinnati Bengals.
With Allen’s contract eating up a signifiant portion of their salary cap space the Bills are now facing a yearly cap-crunch that resulted in some major changes this offseason. It is entirely possible their best opportunity to win has already passed them by.
The Bills are still an outstanding team. Easily one of the best in the NFL. But they have just enough small flaws that keep adding up and hold them back against the small handful of teams on their level. They have accomplished a lot. But only one AFC Championship game and no Super Bowl appearances with this core over the past five years does seem at least a little underwhelming.
