The Arizona Cardinals made a couple of moves with player contracts that will save them some salary cap space this year. One was restructuring the contract of recently acquired center Rodney Hudson.
Hudson was scheduled to make $9.9 million in salary this season. That was also going to be his cap hit.
To save more than $7 million in cap space, the Cardinals paid Hudson $8.8 million as a bonus, reducing his salary to slightly more than the league minimum at $1.1 million, which is fully guaranteed.
With the change, instead of a cap hit of $9.9 million, his contract will count $2.86 million against the cap.
Hudson already had two voided years on his contract after 2022, but the Cardinals added a third voided year, which allows Arizona to prorate the cap hit to 1/5 of the total.
Next season, his cap hit will increase by $1.76 million. He is scheduled to make $10.85 million in 2022 but now will have a cap hit of $12.61 million.
When the contract voids in 2023, 3/5 of his bonus proration will then become a dead money charge against the cap that year, for a total of $5.28 million.
The $5.28 million in dead money in two seasons and the addition of $1.76 million against the cap next year are worth the more than $7 million in space the move creates now.
What will the Cardinals do now? It might simply to create flexibility for moves coming down the line.
If the Cardinals extend Hudson’s contract before it voids, they will avoid the dead money charge and then the yearly proration of $1.76 million will continue for three more seasons.
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