Last week, Brandon Graham signed a one-year extension to remain with the Eagles through the 2022 season.
Now we know the details of his new contract.
The easiest way to look at this extension is that it basically creates a two-year deal worth $18.5 million, per league source. It also significantly lowered Graham’s salary cap hit for the 2021 season from $17.928 million to $7.988 million, a cap savings of $9.94 million for this upcoming season. The Eagles needed that space to become cap compliant for the new league year that began on March 17.
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The way the Eagles did this deal was by giving Graham a roster bonus of $9.825 million this year and an option bonus of $6.25 million in 2022. These amounts prorate over multiple years (this contract technically goes through 2026 with voidable years), limiting the cap hits in 2021 and 2022.
Graham also has workout bonuses of $100K in each of these next two seasons. So the total amount ($18.5M) comes from the roster bonus of $9.825M + the option bonus of $6.25M next year + the two base salaries + the two workout bonuses.
Based on the current construct of the deal, the Eagles will have to figure out the next steps with Graham after the 2022 season; whether there’s a new extension or if they release him. The theory behind this contract isn’t very dissimilar to the way the Eagles restructured Jason Kelce’s contract in that it sets up a decision to be made at a future date.
Here’s a quick look at the next two seasons for Graham:
NFL
Previous 2021 base: $13 million
Previous 2021 cap hit: $17.928 million
New 2021 base: $1.075 million
New 2021 cap hit: $7.988 million
2022 base: $1.15 million
2022 cap hit: $7.685 million
Yes, this is one of those kick-the-can methods that the Eagles use quite frequently. But the salary cap will rise dramatically in coming years as we move away from the pandemic revenue drought and as the new TV money starts to roll into the NFL.
In addition to this extension with Graham, the Eagles have restructured several other contracts this offseason. They restructured contracts for Javon Hargrave, Isaac Seumalo, Darius Slay, Jason Kelce and Brandon Brooks. The Brooks restructure (one of the more recent ones) dropped his cap hit from $14.55 million to $12.07 million, according to a league source.
In case you’re wondering about the Eagles’ cap situation, the latest figures from the NFLPA have them with $3.34 million in cap space but that doesn’t yet include the one-year deal for Anthony Harris that is worth $5 million. Of course, there’s a good chance the Eagles used some voidable years to spread out that cap hit. My guess is it’s similar to the deal they did with Ronald Darby a few years ago.
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