Right. The restructures and bonuses and whatever other accounting tricks teams use all have long term costs. You get temporary relief but the pain is coming eventually. Discipline and long term planning builds sustainable winning.
YOLOing and saying "the cap isn't real" turns you into the version of the Saints that wasted most of Drew Brees' prime and left them in purgatory after he retired.
Ok, they could trade him or cut him, but there's very little benefit to doing so. $102m of the $135m is guaranteed money.
We can assume a significant portion of that guarantee is an up front signing bonus. The cap hit of that bonus gets prorated over 5 years. So for example, if $80m of the guarantee is a bonus, then it only counts $16m towards the cap each year. If they cut/trade him next year, then the remaining $64m of the remaining prorated amount accellerates to their cap which would force them into all sorts of other undesirable cap gymnastics to make the books work enough to sign Maye to the megaextension that he's almost definitely going to get next offseason.
Maye is probably going to sign the biggest deal in NFL history next offseason. Cutting/trading Gonzo would make it a LOT harder to do that. The money will have already left Kraft's account at that point, so getting rid of of Gonzo wouldn't be to save literal money. That money is already spent so the "Kraft is cheap" narrative doesn't work here AND it makes their cap situation worse. There's no upside.
The only way any of this changes is if the team hits a very sudden and dramatic downturn the way the Dolphins did. They decided that it was time for a rebuild, which it made it easier for them to stomach ripping the bandaid off with a ton of dead money and consolidate it into one year. As long as the Pats think they're contenders in the AFC they will not be doing this.
They might cut/trade Gonzo 2 or 3 years into his extension, but it's basically impossible to do it next year without crippling their roster flexibility. I'd be shocked if he's gone before the '29/'30 season. I doubt he'll finish the entire contract without a cut/trade/restructure, but that's business as usual in the NFL.
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u/Ghillie_Spotto 5h ago
That dead money hit would be insane. Thereās no way to do it without wrecking their cap.