It hurts. I know it does. Bucs fans, long-suffering that they are, finally had a team they could be proud of. A Super Bowl team. Tampa Bay residents laid claim to the moniker “Champa Bay,” due in large part to the success of the Bucs, along with the Lightning and the Rays. This was a mega-team, with Pro Bowlers and future Hall of Famers.

Now, in just a few weeks, Bucs fans have learned of the retirement of two major contributors to the team’s offense in quarterback Tom Brady and guard Ali Marpet. There is also continued speculation that tight end Rob Gronkowski will hang it up as well. And to add insult to injury, is it true the Bucs will lose salary cap space?

How can this be? If a player retires, shouldn’t their contract just void without any cap penalties? Why does a team have to continue to pay a player after they have decided to leave the game behind? This was a question posed to me recently. The simplest way to explain the concept of dead cap in the NFL is through this slogan: “Every dollar physically paid to a player must be accounted for at some point.”

That seems simple, right? Well, it gets a bit more complicated, but I am going to try to help you understand it.

Bucs VP of football administration Mike Greenberg – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

The most straightforward way of accounting for money paid is to record it at the time of payment. You will see this in how player base salaries are recorded. Player A earned $2 million in salary in the year 2021, and the team records that $2 million against their 2021 salary cap. However, teams will use two different mechanisms to pay a player early, but account for that payment over a longer period. These mechanisms are signing bonuses and restructure bonuses. But remember, every dollar physically paid to a player must be accounted for at some point.

Signing bonuses allow teams to give players large sums of money up front, but prorate the accounting of those payments over multiple years. As an example, Player B signs a 4-year contract that includes a $16 million signing bonus. The team uses the signing bonus mechanism to help spread that $16 million evenly over the four-year contract, resulting in $4 million cap hits in each year. This way no single year has a giant cap hit. The player loves this because he gets a big, guaranteed check immediately and the team gets some cap relief early in the deal.

Restructure bonuses operate the same way as signing bonuses, but are used later in the life of the contract to convert base salary into immediate bonuses. This turns the accounting of that payment from completely in the year it is paid to spread out evenly over the remaining life of the contract.

Brady & Marpet Contracts Impact Bucs’ Current Cap Space

So how does all of this impact the contracts of Ali Marpet and Tom Brady? Glad you asked. Both contracts had signing bonuses and restructure bonuses that had not been accounted for yet. And since every dollar paid out has to be accounted for at some point, that point is now for the retired duo.

Brady restructured his deal at the end of the 2020 season to include an extra season. That move also reduced his base salary to the league vet minimum. The Bucs agreed to pay him a $20 million signing bonus while converting another $20 million of his 2021 salary to a restructure bonus. This helped the team lower his cap hit in 2021 to re-sign other players.

Bucs LG Ali Marpet – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

However only $8 million of those bonuses was accounted for in 2021. That money has been paid. So, it must be accounted for here in 2022 or 2023. That’s $32 million the NFL requires the Bucs to settle with their salary cap.

Marpet is a similar situation. The contract he signed in 2018 had a $2 million dollar signing bonus to be paid out over the five-year contract. Only $1.6 million of that payment has been accounted for through 2021. The other $400k still has not.

The Bucs also converted $5.5 million of Marpet’s 2020 salary to a restructure bonus. So $2.75 million of that still has not been accounted for. And finally, in 2021 Tampa Bay converted another $5 million of his salary to a restructure bonus. Only $1 million has been accounted for. This leaves them with $7.15 million to reconcile.

The Bucs knew they were entering a championship window. They knew they needed to maximize every dollar of their 2020 and 2021 salary caps. They correctly decided to push that accounting of money paid to future years. But, as players like Brady and Marpet leave, the bill does come due.