The Tennessee Titans and safety Kevin Byard have reportedly agreed to terms on a restructured contract.
According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the restructure lowers Byard’s base salary by $3 million but gives him the chance to earn the money back with incentives. It isn’t clear what those incentives are at this time.
It has been a rocky offseason for Byard and the Titans after the latter asked the former to take a pay cut with the team being strapped for cash. Byard rightly declined, as he’s one of the last guys on this team who deserves to make less money.
While Rapoport uses the term restructure (and we used it in our headline as a result), this is actually a pay cut (hence the quotation marks around the word “restructured” in our headline), so don’t be fooled by the cute wording here.
The #Titans and Pro Bowl S Kevin Byard have agreed to terms on a restructured contract for the 2023 season, source said. His base salary is now $11M and there are incentives available to get back to the $14M he was originally owed.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 21, 2023
Whatever the case may be, the $3 million extra gives the Titans about $11.3 million to work with when added to the $8.3 million in cap space Spotrac has listed, which will help them fit DeAndre Hopkins (and quite possibly George Fant) into the payroll.
