The Eagles restructured Jason Kelce’s contract yesterday according to ESPN’s Field Yates, creating $2.4 million in the process.
While Eagles C Jason Kelce continues to weigh his future, the team paid him a $3M bonus yesterday (the $2.75M roster bonus he was due in 2023 + $250K offseason bonus he was due in 2023).
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) February 17, 2023
The cap impact for now is Philly creates $2.4M in 2023 cap space.
Kelce’s $2.75 million roster bonus was already guaranteed and the other $250,000 bonus was actually a roster bonus escalator that Kelce earned for being named All Pro in 2022. That was also guaranteed. The Eagles added an additional void year to the contract to max out the savings at $2.4 million, bringing his current salary cap number down to $9.025 million.
Kelce’s contract will either be extended if he chooses to continue playing or he will retire and the Eagles will carry the contract until June 2. Kelce’s current contract contains bogus guarantees that kick in if he is on the roster on June 3rd so they have until then to decide what to do.
If Kelce is extended the contract will likely run similar to last seasons one year deal and we can expect his cap charge to increase by $2 to $3 million with the team using a similar mechanism regarding bogus guarantees that kick in if on the roster in June. This allows the team to split dead money charges between 2024 and 2025 rather than taking it all in 2024.
If Kelce retires his cap hit will drop to $7.525 million in 2023 on June 2nd and the team will incur a $13.848 million cap charge in 2024. We currently estimate the Eagles to have in the ballpark of $10 million in cap space for 2023.