Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane reached into his bag of tricks to sign free agent wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders. For the first time I can remember, Beane added a voidable year to a contract to spread out the cap hit.
Essentially, Sanders signed a two-year contract to spread out the signing bonus money between 2021 and 2022. The 2022 season of the deal automatically voids, meaning they won’t pay him any cash in 2022 but he’ll have the pro-rated portion of the cap hit still to be paid. It’s a cap technique used by other GMs but not Beane, to this point.
Sanders’s signing bonus is $2.75 million with a salary of $2.8 million, $50k workout bonus, with $50k available in per-game roster bonuses, too. He gets a $350,000 roster bonus.
Here is the yearly breakdown, courtesy of Jay Skurski of The Buffalo News:
2021
Pro-rated signing bonus: $1.375 million
Roster bonus: $350,000
Workout bonus: $50,000
Base salary: $2.8 million
Per-game active bonuses: $50,000 ($3125 per game)
Catches Incentive: $500,000
Cap hit $4.625 million
2022
Pro-rated signing bonus: $1.375 million
Base salary: Voided
Cap hit: $1.375 million