Eagles
Lane Johnson Restructures Contract, Updated Look at Eagles 2019 Salary Cap Situation
Penn State Great Valley MBA, Penn State Berks Undergrad, Eagle Scout and Vigil Honor, IT Service Manager. I joined Sports Talk Philly in 2017 and root for all the Philly teams (as well as their minor league counter parts).
All posts by Paul BowmanPublished05 Mar 2019
By Paul Bowman, Sports Talk Philly Editor 
The work in the trenches continued on Tuesday as the Philadelphia Eagles are creating more cap room.
The Eagles and offensive tackle Lane Johnson have agreed to a restructured deal, according to Adam Caplan of WIP.
#Eagles, continuing their busy off-season, have restructured Lane Johnson's contract for cap purposes, source said.
— Adam Caplan (@caplannfl) March 5, 2019
While nothing is official yet, Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Johnson’s base salary was converted to a signing bonus. Such a move would free up nearly $6.7 million in cap space this season while increasing his cap hit by $3.3 each of the final two seasons on his current contract.
While OverTheCap has the Eagles at $16.6 million under the cap, the site is missing quite a bit of data as contract information has yet to be released.
The space created by Johnson’s restructure would put the Eagles at $23.3 under the cap and Jason Kelce’s contract extension reportedly freed up a bit more room.
The site is also currently missing Tim Jernigan’s dead money ($6), Seumalo’s extension (which almost certainly offered him a raise this year for a more affordable price over the next three seasons) and Brandon Graham’s contract.
The money on the deals Seumalo and Graham signed has not been publicly reported yet, but I’ll take a stab at what the deals may look like.
The Eagles locked up Seumalo in the final year of his rookie deal just as they did with Jason Kelce in 2014. If his contract follows the same concept as Kelce’s did, it is likely that Seumalo’s cap hit this year was raised to somewhere around $3 million, which is an increase of $2 million and takes the cap space down to $15.3 million.
Graham signed a three-year extension valued near $40 million. A contract like would likely carry cap hits around $10 million in 2019, $13 million in 2020 and $17 million in 2021 unless money was purposefully shifted around, which is very possible. For the sake of argument, I’ll stick with the $10 million cap hit for 2019.
Taking into account the recent signings, and saying the Kelce extension freed up an additional $2 million or so (his original cap hit was only $6.5 million), the Eagles would stand at around $7.3 million in cap space for 2019.
A table outlining the impacts of these moves has been attached at the bottom of this page.
The Eagles have eight picks in the 2019 draft. Signing those players would require around $7 million in cap space, leaving the Birds only $300,000 to make free agent signings or sign players following mid-season injuries. That’s a tight situation, so more moves are certainly coming, likely in the form of Jason Peters, Nelson Agholor and Michael Bennett.
Eagles Salary Cap Transaction Table
| Transaction | Salary Change | New Cap Space |
|---|---|---|
| Cap Space as of February 25, 2019 | – | $3,613,815 |
| Eagles Extend Brandon Graham | +$10,000,000* | -$6,386,185 |
| Eagles Decline Tim Jernigan’s Option | -$7,000,000 | $613,815 |
| Eagles Extend Jason Kelce | -$4,000,000 | $4,613,815 |
| Eagles Extend Isaac Seumalo | +$800,000 | $3,813,815 |
| Lane Johnson Restructures Deal | -$8,200,000 | $12,013,815 |
* – Indicates number is a projection and not yet official
Update: The above table was updated to reflect official numbers as reported by Field Yates of ESPN on the morning of March 6.
Update 2: The above table was updated to reflect official numbers as reported by Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer on the morning of March 6.
After the $7 million that will be required to sign draft picks, the Eagles now have $5 million they can allot to free agents.
