It’s still a little early to know which players the Lions will be chasing in free agency. However, it’s a pretty safe bet that some of the free agent signings, and also contract extensions, will include a void year or two in their contracts.
The automatic void year is a tool that COO Mike Disner and GM Brad Holmes have repeatedly used in managing the Lions salary cap. The void years spread out the cap hit of a new contract, intentionally amortizing the value over a longer period than the player will actually play for Detroit.
The Lions have been very good about avoiding unintentional dead money. Void years are a little different, even though the accounting ledger shifts the void years to dead money once the contract expires. The void years are a deliberate, intentional creation of dead cap obligations in order to make the contract more affordable at the time of signing.
This year, the Lions will eat some dead cap money on void years in a few contracts:
- Halapoulivaati Vaitai – $3.84 million
- Romeo Okwara – $3.5 million
- C.J. Gardner-Johnson – $2 million
- Graham Glasgow – $1.47 million
- Emmanuel Moseley – $1 million
- Teddy Bridgewater – $500,000
It’s a total of over $12.3 million in cap room sacrificed to void years. It’s an emerging trend where the Lions are one of the forefront leaders, and that isn’t expected to change.
As an example, let’s say the Lions want to sign free agent CB Chidobe Awuzie as a hypothetical target. PFF lists Awuzie with an estimated free agent contract value of $21 million over two years with $12.75 million (60 percent) guaranteed, and that seems like a reasonable ballpark figure for the Lions to try and hit.
Adding a void year onto the deal would spread out the $21 million salary over three years instead of two. It also allows the Lions to spread any signing bonus over another season, and that could be key in negotiating if another team is making a similar offer. It pushes some of the cap hit deeper into the future when the overall NFL salary cap increases. There’s some risk in kicking that can too often, but it’s been an effective tool for Disner and the Lions.
Expect them to keep using it.
