Early in free agency, the New York Giants were signing players to heavily front-loaded deals that included substantial roster bonuses, which freed up future salary cap space.
However, the organization quickly amended those deals, converting those roster bonuses into signing bonuses that are paid out over the duration of a contract, essentially eating up that future cap space in order to clear up additional cap space in 2020 — about $10 million or so.
Many believed the Giants made that choice in order to make a run at a top-tier free agent, but that never happened. Instead, the team has simply sat on the additional cap space.
That was intentional, says assistant general manager Kevin Abrams.
“The preference is to have flat cap counts in our contracts and to limit the amount of amortized bonuses for obvious reasons,” Abrams said during a Monday conference call. “When we started the free agency process, wherever possible, we were going to try to use roster bonuses with a lump sum in year one as opposed to spreading out signing bonuses over the life of the contract.
“As we had some success with getting to agreements with a few more players than maybe what we thought was realistic at the beginning, in an effort to keep cap room that we wanted to have to operate throughout the offseason and training camp, we decided to push a little bit of the roster bonus money into signing bonuses. We are pretty happy with the structures we’ve had with these deals in respect to our future caps.”
Although those contracts are now all finalized and technically on the books, there remains some potential pitfalls for the Giants (and every other NFL team) unrelated to the bonuses.
Because players are unable to take physicals, the contracts could still be voided at a future date should a player be deemed unhealthy.
“The guys that are new to the club that haven’t passed their physicals yet haven’t taken them. Once everything resumes and life is back to normal and doctor availability and travel restrictions are lifted, we will get those physicals done. If they do not pass, they will be free agents again,” Abrams said.
“Unfortunately, it’s the same risk as you always have this time of year. The players that are working out on their own, they run the risk of injury, which isn’t protected because it wouldn’t be considered a football injury. Unfortunately, that risk is just extended this year because of the inability to have players come in and work at our facility under our supervision.”
The good news? The Giants didn’t hand out any truly outlandish contracts, their bonus changes haven’t harmed the team and none of their incoming free agents have any lingering injury issues.
