Report: Seahawks restructure contract of Gabe Jackson to free up cap space

According to a report from Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com, the Seattle Seahawks have restructured the contract of right guard Gabe Jackson in order to free up cap space for the remainder of the 2022 season.

For those curious about how the team created that cap space, they did so by converting the maximum allowable amount of his remaining 2022 base salary into signing bonus. The math behind the conversion is laid out below.

Prior to the restructure, contract Jackson signed after being acquired from the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021 had a base salary of $6,000,000, or $333,333 per week for each of the 18 weeks of this season. The minimum salary for a player with eight accrued seasons, such as Jackson has earned during his time in the NFL, is $1,120,000, or $62,222 per week.

Having already earned his weekly check for each of the first five weeks of the year, Jackson has already been paid $1,666,667, which continues to count against the salary cap and about which nothing can be done to change the cap cost. Under the restructured contract his base salary will be $62,222 per game for the remainder of the season, meaning over the final 13 weeks of the year he will be paid a total of $808,889 in base salary. Putting those two numbers together, Jackson’s total base salary for 2022 will be $2,475,556.

Then, the next step in determining the amount of cap space created is to compute the difference between his prior salary and his new salary. So, a difference of $271,111 in each of the final 13 weeks of the season represents a total of $3,524,444 that was converted to signing bonus. Since money paid as signing bonus counts against the cap over the life of the contract of the player and Jackson is under contract for this season and next, the $3,524,444 is split evenly between 2022 and 2023. That means the $1,762,222 of new cap space was created by simply moving $1,762,222 of Jackson’s cap hit from 2022 to 2023.

Thus, as a result of this move Jackson is now slated to carry a cap hit of $11,262,223 in 2023, and the Seahawks would recognize a $4,762,223 dead money cap charge should they opt to move on from him.