In the last few days I have gotten a few emails and a number of tweets asking me about three players and their roster status. Since I cant keep up with all of it I thought I would explain it here.

The three players in question are Kyle Rudolph, Malik Jackson, and Alshon Jeffery with Rudolph getting the most attention since we had removed him from the roster a few weeks ago when the Vikings announced he was going to be cut. Normally I wait until releases are official to move players on and off the salary cap estimates for each team but during the free agency time period I usually make exceptions to try to keep up with reporting. So with Rudolph I put his numbers in the dead money for the Vikings and moved him off the team. Except the Vikings never released Rudolph then or anytime in the near future after the cut was announced.

What happened here was that the Vikings made the decision to designate Rudolph what is called a June 1 cut. This was kind of unexpected but what happens in the June 1 is that the players salary cap charge counts in full against the salary cap from now until June 1 acting the same as if he was on the team even though he is actually on the Giants roster. So once they designated him the June 1 I reinstated his contract and removed him from the 2021 dead money section. On June 2nd his salary cap charges will officially come off the books with $1.45 staying as dead money in 2021 and $2.9 million as dead money in 2022 (we already put that in). So that is why Rudolph reads as he does.

The same holds true for Jackson and Jeffery on the Eagles (as well as Tre Boston in Carolina but nobody asked me about him that I can recall). Both were designated June 1 cuts so their numbers stay on the roster and will be removed on June 2. The Eagles moves for these two were obvious and something we predicted back in December when they very smartly renegotiated those two contracts to clearly take advantage of this rule to help with their salary cap problems.

This type of salary cap accounting is also why players like Drew Brees won’t officially be retired by the Saints until June 2 even though he already announced his retirement. So if you are wondering about why he is still listed on the roster this is also the reason why. Hopefully this will help clear up any confusion you may have on some of the player statuses on OTC.