Gang Green Nation
The Jets are about to add some salary cap space.
The Jets released quarterback Aaron Rodgers and linebacker CJ Mosley in March, but the 2025 salary cap hits of both players are about to go down.
This is because the Jets designated both players as post-June 1 cuts.
As you likely know, many players continue to have a salary cap charge for their team after being cut. This is called dead money. The concept of dead money seems confusing, but it is actually quite simple.
The amount of money a player is paid does not always equal the amount a team is charged against the salary cap. A player might get paid $10 million in a given year but only count $2 million against the salary cap. The extra $8 million doesn’t just go away, though. It must be charged to a team’s salary cap in future seasons.
When a player is cut, that bill becomes due immediately. The team is charged for the full amount of money paid to the player that has yet to count against the salary cap. That is known as dead money.
There is an exception, however. If a player is cut after June 1, the dead money bill is split over two seasons.
With the Jets facing a tight salary cap anyway, it made sense for the team to spread massive dead money hits for Rodgers and Mosley over two seasons. It would have been very inconvenient for the team to have to carry the two players on the roster until after June 1, however. Those are two roster spots that couldn’t go to players the team actually wants to bring to training camp in 2025. It wouldn’t be good for the players either being stuck on a roster of a team that doesn’t want them instead of being free to seek out new opportunities.
For this reason, the league allows each team to designate up to two players as post-June 1 cuts before June 1.
The players can immediately become free agents and able to solicit offers from other teams. The team doesn’t need to use up roster spots on players about to be cut.
There is a catch, however. The players who are released count against the cap through June 1 as though they are still on the team. It isn’t until after June 1 that the team gets cap relief.
So through the offseason, Rodgers has had a cap number of $23.5 million and Mosley a cap hit of $12.784 million. Those are the cap hits the Jets would have had for the players if on the roster in 2025.
Now that we are passing June 1, the Jets will get the savings. Rodgers’ cap number goes down to $14 million, and Mosley’s goes down to $8.8 million. Thus the Jets are about to gain just under $13.5 million in new cap space.
The one catch is that because the Jets are spreading these cap hits over two years, Rodgers and...
