How the Eagles manipulate the salary cap

The Philadelphia Eagles are fresh off a Super Bowl victory and four straight playoff appearances. Nick Sirianni defied early expectations and emerged as one of the best coaches in the NFL, while Howie Roseman has continued to defy the odds with aggressive salary cap management and shrewd drafting. After looking more closely at the Eagles spending on offense and defense, I must say I’m impressed.

I also came away with some long-term concerns. The way Roseman and the Eagles structure contracts puts a tremendous strain on the team’s future finances, and introduces a big element of risk. These risks haven’t come back to bite Philadelphia so far, and perhaps they never will. Perhaps when the bill eventually comes due in three to four seasons, the Eagles window will have gently closed and it’ll be a natural time for the team to reset their cap situation and start over.

For the record, I fully support Roseman’s approach. This is the ideal time to go “all in” and push money into the future. The Eagles are clearly built to contend right now, with several top players all in the midst of their prime years. If there’s a time for pedal-to-the-metal, it’s right now.

But after my review of the Eagles’ finances, I think it’s worth discussing just how much money is being pushed forward and how things could fall apart quickly in a worst-case scenario. Not to be nitpicky or contrarian–I respect Roseman’s bold approach–but to explain that the strategy does have potential consequences.

How do the Philadelphia Eagles structure their contracts?
As primarily a Falcons writer whose team is in the midst of a cap crunch, I often have fans asking me about the Eagles approach. How could the Eagles, who are paying a franchise quarterback, two wide receivers, a tight end, and two offensive linemen elite money, along with several key defensive players, not be feeling the same squeeze as Atlanta?

The answer is twofold. One is that the Eagles draft extremely well, and much of their roster and starting lineup are occupied by affordable rookie contracts. The second is that Philadelphia has deferred the vast majority of the money from those aforementioned big deals far into the future, using a number of salary cap manipulations.

What salary cap manipulations do the Eagles use?
Those cap manipulations can be complicated, but the basic ones employed by the Eagles (and most teams) are pretty simple. The first maneuver is to convert a player’s base salary into a signing bonus (or in the Eagles’ case, option bonus). While base salary counts 100% against the cap, bonus money is prorated (spread out) over the length of the contract up to five years.

The second maneuver is adding void years to a contract. Void years are essentially fake years added on to the end of a contract for the sole purpose of spreading out prorated bonus money. When a player hits the first void year on a contract, the deal voids and all the prorated money remaining at that point must be immediately paid out.

Because those bonuses can be spread out up to five years, void years are added if there are fewer than five years left on the deal to maximize the amount of money you can push. If there are only three years left, you can only evenly distribute it over three years. If there are two void years added, you can prorate it evenly over five years.

The Eagles employ both of these manipulations in basically every one of their major deals. Their contracts look so similar (and relatively unique) that you could blank out the team and player name and I could probably tell you just by looking at the structure that the deal was done by Howie Roseman. Philadelphia’s style is to pay the veteran minimum base salary, add 3-4 void years, and pay players mostly in option bonus, which makes the contracts extremely affordable in the early years but causes them to quickly balloon to astronomical levels in the third and fourth seasons.

The players don’t mind it, because they’re still getting plenty of security and cash up front. Philadelphia loves it because they get tons of cap flexibility in the short term. As long as the players keep performing over the course of their deal, everything is fine. When the bill comes due towards the end of the contract, a new extension can continue to push new money out into the future.

But what would happen if a player didn’t keep performing, either through injury, age, or retirement? What would happen if multiple players fell off at the same time? That could lead to a potential “doomsday” scenario for the Eagles.

The Eagles have pushed all their cap hits into the future, and could face a mountain of dead cap
As I’ve said, I agree with Roseman’s approach and think it’s justified. That doesn’t mean it’s without risk. Even after this Super Bowl win, you don’t have to look hard to see the cost of some of the team’s previous star players who have moved on through retirement or free agency.

The Eagles are currently carrying a whopping $64.6 million in dead cap for 2025, ranking third overall in the NFL. They have the most dead cap in the league on the defensive side of the ball thanks to $10 million from Fletcher Cox, $16.4 million from Josh Sweat, $9 million from Brandon Graham, and $4.7 million from C.J. Gardner-Johnson. Jason Kelce’s retirement on the offensive side of the ball is also costing the team $16.4 million in 2025, along with Mekhi Becton’s departure in free agency ($3.5 million).

Some of these cap hits were inevitable, the result of retirements that were approaching for years. While retirement can often help a team’s cap situation, it actually hurts the Eagles due to how they structure contracts. If Philadelphia can’t continue to extend a player’s deal into the future, all the deferred money will come due when the contract voids.

This applies to free agent departures as well. Josh Sweat got a big deal to join the Arizona Cardinals, but his departure is going to cost a whopping $16.4 million. In effect, the Eagles are still paying a high-end starting salary to Sweat despite him walking in free agency to play for another team. C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Mekhi Becton are other examples of this, although to a lesser extent. A lot more dead money will appear on the defensive side of the ball after the post-June 1st cuts of Darius Slay and James Bradberry process – although the Eagles will save a small amount of cap space net as a result of the two-year proration.

Those departures coupled with massive cap hits could crush less-prepared teams. The Eagles are the exception because they’ve drafted incredibly well. They have cheap replacements ready to step in, and it doesn’t feel like those cheap replacements are a significant downgrade on the field.

It’s all a calculated risk. Philadelphia (correctly) surmised that they needed to maximize their roster in 2024 and go all-in for a Super Bowl victory. That means minimizing cap hits to squeeze as many contributors onto the 53-man roster as possible. And that aggressive style certainly didn’t stop in 2024. The 2025 contract extensions for running back Saquon Barkley and linebacker Zack Baun continue the trend. Barkley’s cap hit in 2025 is a comically low $6.66 million on a record-setting deal that averages over $20 million per year. Baun’s deal is even lower, with a cap hit of just $4.39 million despite a yearly average of $17M.

That money is there, and it must be paid out. It just isn’t going to be paid out this year, or the next. The salary cap has been pushed out as far as possible, and in the case of Barkley and Baun, the bill could come due at a time when both players could be starting to decline in their early 30s.

That’s the risk that the Eagles are taking. Or maybe it’s less of a risk, and more of a consequence. The team believes their time is now, and I have no reason to doubt their conviction in that regard. The only question is when that bill will come due, and how painful will it be to dig out of?

After all, what Howie Roseman is doing with the salary cap isn’t all that different from the Saints’ Mickey Loomis. Both are aggressively structuring contracts and pushing tons of money into the future. One team is on top of the world, with a Super Bowl victory and a promising short-term future. The other is a mediocre mess, with no good path to improvement or getting out of their bad deals.

The difference is that Philadelphia has drafted (and chosen who to give those big contracts to) a lot better than New Orleans. Can Roseman and Sirianni keep it up over the long haul? I’m not sure, but it’ll be fascinating to watch.

What do you think about Philadelphia’s aggressive salary cap management and their “all-in” approach over the past two years? Do you think they should continue on this path indefinitely, or consider taking a more long-term view in the coming years?