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Jets to Pay Over $24 Million in Dead Money To 6 Players


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Jets to pay over $24 million in dead money to 6 former players

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July 23, 2021 8:12 am ET
 

Dead money is inevitable in the NFL.

Teams will dump players on bad deals before their contracts are up to stop the bleeding of cash, but they still have to pay out the rest of the guaranteed money from those poor decisions. The Jets have had to do that a lot recently and will shell out $24.3 million to players no longer on the team in 2021, according to Over the Cap.

That’s the seventh-highest total in the NFL. The figure includes one of the biggest free agent blunders in recent memory: cornerback Trumaine Johnson. Joe Douglas cut Johnson before the 2020 season just two years into a five-year, $72.5 million contract that included $34 million guaranteed.

Johnson is just one of six former players who will earn a paycheck from the Jets despite not suiting up for Gang Green. Some, like Johnson, were released earl. Others were traded away.

Douglas has done well to reduce the Jets’ dead cap hits during his tenure as general manager. Although $24.3 million is a lot of money, it’s still $20 million less than the $44.3 million the Jets paid in dead money in 2020 and slightly less than the $27.6 million in dead money Douglas inherited when he joined the team in 2019. As of this writing, the Jets don’t have any dead money on the books for 2022 – but that could easily change as the season progresses.

For now, here are the six former players who will count against the Jets’ salary cap in 2021.

CB Trumaine Johnson (free agent) – $8 million

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(Steve Luciano-AP)

QB Sam Darnold (Panthers) – $5 million

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(Nell Redmond-AP)

RB Le'Veon Bell (free agent) – $4 million

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(Mike Stobe-Getty Images)

WR Quincy Enunwa (free agent) – $3.6 million

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(Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports)

OG Kelechi Osemele (free agent) – $3.12 million

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(Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports)

DE Henry Anderson (Patriots) – $1.3 million

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(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

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20 minutes ago, flgreen said:

Trumaine Johnson should be in jail for what he did to the Jets.  LOL

Or maybe Mac should be in the nut house.  

One of the worst free agent signings in any sport in history, but JD has a clearly different philosophy to avoid situations like Trumaine Johnson.

You simply do not give someone their "Last contract".  The minue Trumaine Johnson signed his name to that paper he had zero motivation, other then whatever internal drive to win that he had, to perform as he knew he wasnt getting another contract after the Jets.  You cannot do that.

JD has shown with players like Davis and Lawson that he is willing to pay, but that he keeps the contracts short which is a great way to motivate the players and avoid complete disasters like Trumaine

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2 minutes ago, BCJet said:

One of the worst free agent signings in any sport in history, but JD has a clearly different philosophy to avoid situations like Trumaine Johnson.

You simply do not give someone their "Last contract".  The minue Trumaine Johnson signed his name to that paper he had zero motivation, other then whatever internal drive to win that he had, to perform as he knew he wasnt getting another contract after the Jets.  You cannot do that.

JD has shown with players like Davis and Lawson that he is willing to pay, but that he keeps the contracts short which is a great way to motivate the players and avoid complete disasters like Trumaine

Mac doubled down by signing Bell and most Jets fans were very excited about it.  

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Quick let's spend the empty cap space we do have irresponsibly on inflated contracts for JAGs because it will make some of the fans happy in the moment. Like ice cream and a fat person.  No chance there will be any regrets soon after in either scenario. Those same people will want to repeat the same cycle the following year and rag on those of us actually paying attention. "Who cares about the cap? It's the owner's money"...

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This stuff pisses me off when it impacts the team's ability to add players, but that wasn't the case this offseason and they should have another hundred million or so to spend next offseason.  Meh.

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31 minutes ago, Sarge4Tide said:

Enunwa got hurt but I think he had a lot of talent and potential - don't really blame anyone for that

We got our money's worth out of Anderson even with the extra 1.3 million.

Osemele was horrible, but these things happen so it might have been worth a shot

JD cut his losses with Darnold pretty effectively - could have been a lot worse

Bell and Johnson were horrible signings from Day 1

Also, while it sucks the Jets are carrying X amount dead space money (since we aren't sure how much of the above includes some accounting cap charge) isn't there some good news in here that the Jets will have a decent amount of cap room next year? I get there are other things to consider though. 

 

16 minutes ago, Dcat said:

I think they are also paying a portion of Bobby Bonilla's yearly payment every July on Bobby Bonilla Day.  

Bobby may have signed the most awesome sports contract outside the one the Kentucky Colonels got to not join the NBA. 

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DEAD MONEY DOES NOT GET PAID TO PLAYERS.*

It is an accounting fiction.

It's money that was ALREADY paid to players, in the form of a signing bonus, that wasn't counted against the cap when paid and is now hitting the cap because the player was cut or traded.

 

*Dead money that is from a cut player's guaranteed salary is actually paid to players, but unless I'm mistaken none of the Jets 24M in dead money is from guaranteed salary

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10 minutes ago, Doggin94it said:

DEAD MONEY DOES NOT GET PAID TO PLAYERS.*

It is an accounting fiction.

It's money that was ALREADY paid to players, in the form of a signing bonus, that wasn't counted against the cap when paid and is now hitting the cap because the player was cut or traded.

 

*Dead money that is from a cut player's guaranteed salary is actually paid to players, but unless I'm mistaken none of the Jets 24M in dead money is from guaranteed salary

Thank you, I was just about to say the same.  People seem to take one extreme on the other on this, and neither is right.

No, dead cap is not money still being paid in the future, short of any future guarantees that had not yet been hit.

However, dead money is also not some great scheme by teams to get away with paying out less money.  It is money that was already actively paid out to the players in years past, that they didn't yet take the cap hit from.  If anything, that means it allowed a team to spend more money in the past years on other players, not less to anyone.

Basically, it's a matter of past team's taking out loans against future caps.  Now you can certainly argue over the quality of cap management involved with that (or of course, the idiocy of certain contracts, as others have pointed out), but that's another story.

 

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18 minutes ago, Doggin94it said:

DEAD MONEY DOES NOT GET PAID TO PLAYERS.*

It is an accounting fiction.

It's money that was ALREADY paid to players, in the form of a signing bonus, that wasn't counted against the cap when paid and is now hitting the cap because the player was cut or traded.

 

*Dead money that is from a cut player's guaranteed salary is actually paid to players, but unless I'm mistaken none of the Jets 24M in dead money is from guaranteed salary

The real lesson here is Macc sucks.

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2 hours ago, flgreen said:

Trumaine Johnson should be in jail for what he did to the Jets.  LOL

Or maybe Mac should be in the nut house.  

 

2 hours ago, Ghost said:

 I hate Trumaine Johnson. 

 

2 hours ago, Biggs said:

Trumanine Johnson won.  Good for him.  It's a rounding error for Woody.  

I mean, in Tru's defense, he had just witnessed the Jets pay out a record-setting contract to Mevi$ to do nothing more than be a useless waste of space at the very same position.  Who wouldn't want to take a deal like that?!?

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34 minutes ago, Doggin94it said:

DEAD MONEY DOES NOT GET PAID TO PLAYERS.*

It is an accounting fiction.

It's money that was ALREADY paid to players, in the form of a signing bonus, that wasn't counted against the cap when paid and is now hitting the cap because the player was cut or traded.

 

*Dead money that is from a cut player's guaranteed salary is actually paid to players, but unless I'm mistaken none of the Jets 24M in dead money is from guaranteed salary

Oh really?

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