The Giants and (the walking) Dead Money

I've listed my estimates from time to time so far on this blog on the Giants' cap situation. What I haven't done is dive deep into the topic of "Dead money." Now, what exactly is dead money you may ask? Put simply, it is the portion of money that is still owed to a player after a team releases/cuts him. Non-guaranteed salary (a.k.a. "Paragraph 5" salary) is not part of this equation. Once a team lets go of a player he doesn't make this portion of his salary, and it does not count into the salary cap calculation. What does count is the signing bonus money.

When a player signs a contract, his signing bonus money gets paid upfront; however, for cap purposes, the signing bonus money gets prorated for however many years the players signs for. It should be noted that the most that signing bonuses can be prorated for is 5 years, even if the length of the contract is longer, as was the case with Chris Canty (his deal was for 6 years, but was prorated for 5; see HERE). When a team lets go of a player with years left of his deal, that signing bonus money gets accelerated to the most up to date figure for the year that he is cut, even though the player already received all the money upfront when he signed with the team.

If a team cuts a player on or after June 1st, then that leftover dead money gets spread out over the next two years, instead of the league year that the player is cut in. Check out this excellent article dating back about 3 months ago to February 19th on the subject by Jason Fitzgerald over at overthecap.com titled "Explaining the June 1st Designation". On a sidenote, teams are allowed to designate up to two players as June 1st cuts when they cut them prior to that date. IF they do, then when June 1st arrives, the team in question gets cap credit added on to it's cap number.

Listed below, are the Giants' estimated dead money figures that I compiled from mostly from overthecap.com (scroll to the bottom here). The only figure that I adjusted was that of Osi Umenyiora. When his deal was restructured last June for the 2012 season, I specifically remember that the Giants gave up $1 million in dead money for the 2013 season after they tacked on a voidable year to Osi's contract, not the $932,555 that Jason has down. For what it's worth, spotrac.com has Osi' dead money listed as $1 million dollars (click scroll to the bottom HERE). Without further ado, here are the estimated dead money figures for the Giants that I have for the 2013 season:

The total of amount of dead money listed to the left is $6,819,527. If Bradshaw and Canty are considered June 1st cuts, as Patricia Traina speculated in this article from insidefootball.com published back on March 7th (click HERE), then the Giants would stand to receive cap credits for them on June 2nd. I tweeted Jason Fitzgerald reading that possibility, and he said that they weren't to his knowledge, so I'm probably just hoping against hope, as I have deep respect and trust for Jason and his work.

Four teams received cap credit for this type of transaction last season (click HERE). They are the Cowboys for Terence Newman, the Colts for Gary Brackett, the Panthers for Travelle Wharton, and the Raiders for former Giants Kevin Boss. It'll be interesting to see who falls underneath that sub-category of cap saving cuts.