The Eagles Dead Cap Isn’t a Failure… It’s a Feature

Updated on 2/13/25 with 2024 cap numbers

You can call me crazy, but if I could have one job with an NFL team, besides GM, it would be “the salary cap guy”. I probably never talked about this, but I’m an economist by education and as complicated and at times non-sensical as the cap can be, I love it.

And the cap, particularly dead cap, has been a big topic this off-season. It looms over every decision or player move like a bankruptcy… “the Eagles may have $50M of dead cap in 2025” or “we can’t release Bradberry because of his dead cap hit” are common concerns.

Dead cap isn’t in itself an issue, it’s a feature of the Eagles salary cap approach.

It’s almost all planned in. It’s expected. And it’s beneficial.

And it shouldn’t force you to make a bad decision to keep a bad player.

First, I assume most know what dead cap is but, in case not as I have gotten a lot of questions recently on it, a quick primer.

When a player gets a bonus, that bonus is pro-rated over the life of the contract, up to a maximum of 5 years. The money was already paid to the player, but for salary cap accounting, it doesn’t count all at once.

For example, let’s use James Bradberry‘s initial 2022 contract with the Eagles which was:

• 1-year contract with 4 void years
• Total contract of $7.25M with a $1.035M salary and $6.215M bonus

Bradberry was immediately paid the full bonus and then $57,500 each week (the salary divided into 18 weekly payments), actually receiving the full $7.25M by the end of the 2022 season. That’s how the money actually changed hands.

But from a cap perspective, his 1-year contract was actually a 5-year contract – one “real” year where he was on the team and four void years whose only purpose was to push pro-rated bonus into future.

Here is how his $7.25M contract was accounted for:

	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
Salary	$1.035M	void	void	void	void
Bonus	$1.243M	$1.243M	$1.243M	$1.243M	$1.243M
Cap Hit	$2.278M
Dead Cap		$4.972M

He only had a $2.278M cap hit in 2022 and then an expected $4.972M cap hit in 2023 from the remaining dead cap in the non-playing void years if he was not re-signed (which he obviously was).

Hopefully that’s straightforward. Now on to the “why”…

The best analogy for dead cap is it’s an interest-free loan. And that’s exactly how Howie sees it:

It’s no different than when you’re trying to buy a house. If you have the opportunity to buy a house and put all the cash down or the interest rates are really good and you’re going to pay it over time, why wouldn’t you use that money now and understand that as it goes forward you’re going to be able to do that? 

Howie Roseman in Reuben Frank’s 2022 NBC Sports article “Why Eagles GM Howie Roseman isn’t concerned with millions in dead money”

Why do this? Two reasons:

1. You can afford a better roster in the short-term
The Eagles got a $7M cornerback for their Super Bowl run for only $2.278M against the 2022 cap. To put the value in player terms, this allowed the Eagles to also sign other players totaling $5M, for example Kyzir White ($3M) and Ndamukong Suh ($2M), that they wouldn’t have been able to fit.

2. Future cap dollars are worth less than today cap dollars
And not only do you “pay it back” later with no interest, with the salary cap increasing every year Howie takes the cap hit in the future where that money is a smaller percentage of the cap. Howie hit this point as well:

It’s all the same amount of money, it’s just when you choose to do it. From our perspective, it felt like the way the cap is going to go going forward, it made sense to have the option to take it in future years.

Howie Roseman, 2022

If you get dead cap, you can skip this section. But if not, I’ll try to make an analogy to our non-professional football player worlds.

Using an interest-free loan to buy a car

Going back to the interest-free loan analogy, say you make $50,000 a year (your salary cap) and you always wanted to buy a Porsche (your Bradberry). You find an older, used one with a bunch of miles on it for $10,000. It may not last but hey, you got your Porsche.

You could save up and just buy it but since you have access to a 5-year interest-free loan (good luck with that in the real world), you take the loan and pay $2,000 a year for thr car over 5 years.

Raises reduce the payment burden

But let’s say you also get 10% raises every year. Again, good luck with that in the real world, but I’m using 10% because that’s how much the salary cap has gone up annually since 2021.

In 5 years, you will be making just over $80,000 a year (your new salary cap). That same $2,000 car payment was a fairly sizable 4% of your income in the first year, but by year 5 it’s now only 2.5% of your income.

To make this more accurate with the Bradberry example, say you made a mistake and the high-mile Porsche you bought started breaking down two years in. You decide to scrap it and pay off the remaining $6,000 loan. But you are also making $60,500 then due to your raises – a much easier burden for you than it was two years ago. We don’t have the concept of void years here, but the final 3 years of your loan act like them.

Imperfect example but it works.

The Eagles as “leaders” in dead cap

But the Eagles have been even more aggressive, averaging over $60M in dead cap annually and 30% of the cap since 2021, top in the league over the 2021-23 period.

Not only did the salary cap contraction help drive this increase for the Eagles, but they also had to deal with Carson Wentz‘s at-the-time-highest $33.8M dead cap hit in 2021. But the Eagles have been on a path the intentionally use dead cap for years.

Most of the league has loved dead cap since 2021

And now the league is, overall, following suit – 24 teams have increased dead cap usage in the 2022-24 period vs. 2018-21 (which is even more striking since 2021 included the Covid distortion which drove up dead cap). Below shows the shift in dead cap usage across the league from the 2018-21 period to the last 3 years.

The Chiefs as a counter example to Philly

And note that the Chiefs, who weren’t big users of dead cap prior to Covid, have actually further reduced their dead cap usage, now 4th lowest in the league at only 7% of their cap space in the 2021-23 period. GM Brett Veach is a contrast to Howie, largely avoiding dead cap.

As an example, last year the Chiefs reworked holdout DT Chris Jones‘ contract and gave him $6.75M in new money. They added 4 void years on his deal but it only added $3.4M of dead cap after the 2023 season, giving the Chiefs a total of $4M on the books so far for 2024. That’s a big difference from numbers that notable Eagles would have.

Not saying this is better or worse, it’s just a different approach.

Looking ahead on the Eagles situation

Howie has reduced dead cap a bit since the 2021 peak which was the double hit of Covid and Wentz’s unplanned hit. But it isn’t going anywhere and the Eagles aren’t going to become the Chiefs (I mean from a dead cap perspective, they have already taken the Lombardi Trophy…)

Here is a view on “planned for” dead cap for the Eagles. Without counting any new deals that will surely add more, there’s over $130M of dead cap scheduled over the next three years, averaging near $45M per year. Some of this will not hit with extensions, but that just further pushes it out – it is all still there.

	2025	2026	2027
Jason Kelce (20246/1 designation)	16.4
Fletcher Cox (2024 6/1 designation)	10.1
Mekhi Becton	3.5
Devin White	2.2
Zack Baun	1.9
Josh Sweat	16.4
James Bradberry	10.8
Brandon Graham (2025 6/1 designation)	4.6	4.5
Darius Slay (2025 6/1 designation)	9.2	13.3
Bryce Huff		9.7
Dallas Goedert		5.9
CJGJ		3.5
Jake Elliott		5.1
Lane Johnson		21.2	11.3
Saquon Barkley			4.9

Is the Eagles dead cap usage a smart and innovative way to get ahead of the league? Or is it to be avoided? It’s not that simple as it can be both.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is signing players to good contracts.

If you sign somebody to a deal where they are productive through the contract and use void years to push cap out, it does nothing but benefit you by allowing you to “pay back” this money with cheaper future dollars. This is what they did with all of their core players like Kelce, Fletcher, Lane, Mailata, AJ Brown, and on and on.

But if you make a mistake like Bradberry, then the dead cap is a problem where you either have cap space allocated to a player that is not on the team or not providing value. But the problem is the bad deal, not the dead cap… the alternative was to count all the money in the current years which is still bad.

What’s even worse, though, is keeping a player for no other reason than their dead cap hit.

This is where the decision gets interesting and two different examples give, in my opinion, different answers.

In 2024, Bradberry was obviously done but had a $15M dead cap hit if released (it could have been split with $5M in 2024 and $10M in 2025 with a 6/1 release, but same total amount). The Eagles kept him and intended to try him at safety before he went on IR all season, but I would have released him for following reasons:

• Given his age, there was little reason to believe JBJ was going to recover and improve in 2024
• The Eagles had 10 CBs last year before they drafted Quinyon and Cooper but typically roster 6 – keeping JBJ meant they were going to make a decision to release somebody younger like Jobe or Zech

An opposite example is this year’s popular cut/trade candidate, Bryce Huff. Signed to 3 year, $51M deal and barely played, including zero snaps in the Super Bowl. But differing from the JBJ situation, I keep him for 2025 for the following reasons:

• Has a $30M dead cap hit which would put the Eagles in a difficult 2025 cap situation, even with a 6/1 release
• The true cost of keeping Huff for 2025 is $250K (workout bonus) as his salary and option bonus are fully guaranteed – if he can provide $250K worth of value in 2025, you keep him
• Unlike Bradberry, with the EDGE depth chart right now being Nolan and Jalyx, Huff isn’t keeping anybody off the roster
• There’s reason to believe he can or will improve

Sure, Huff has been a disappointment, but it just doesn’t make sense to cut him. And he won’t be.

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This off-season, if you catch yourself complaining about dead cap, just remember that Howie intentionally uses it – it’s not an accident or a mistake. It’s using cheaper future dollars instead of more valuable today dollars.

The only way this blows up on Howie is if he misses on multiple guys that he has significant future, guaranteed dollars with. And so far, he has avoided it.