Evans Restructure Is About Insurance, Survival
September 1st, 2021
General manager Jason Licht
Joe can already hear the drops of saliva from Bucs fans hitting their keyboards.
Joe is typing here to stop the drool.
Numbers now have been attached to the contract restructuring of Mike Evans, which was reported by BSPN earlier this week. It seems the Bucs have played with their spreadsheets and found about $9 million to spend now against their future salary caps thanks to the greatest receiver in Tampa Bay history.
So are the Bucs about to sign a big-name player now or make a trade to acquire someone? No, no, no.
This deal is about having a well paid expanded practice squad and stashing cash in case of injury later in the season.
Hell, general manager Jason Licht really wasn’t playing the free agent market in March or April outside of Giovani Bernard. Why would he go there now?
Evans made the team-first move Bucs fans have come to expect. It feels like Evans lets the Bucs re-work his deal every season.
Thanks, Mike.
September 1st, 2021 at 12:42 pm
Cool
Mickens made it to practice squad. Love it
Mcelroy too
Mickens is needed in case darden struggles and they can squeeze someone else out for both
September 1st, 2021 at 1:10 pm
Thanks Mike.
What a team of selfless players we have.
Bravo Jason Licht. Finding team first players is hard to do nowadays!
September 1st, 2021 at 1:19 pm
$9 Million!
For perspective, in 2020 4Net signed for $1M and AB $750,000.
Every player wants to be in Tampa in 2021.
Can’t wait to see what happens next!
September 1st, 2021 at 1:24 pm
Mike is easily our best drafted offensive player ever, a good dude, and our offenses version of Brooks or Selmon. You couldn’t draw up a more perfect wide receiver for this team and despite of all of this, he’s still overlooked and underrated by many in the media. Julio, Hill, et al, can’t hold a candle to this dude. Mike is the best receiver the league has seen since Moss and Brown were in their primes.
In the immortal words of the late, great, Stan Lee, nuff said!
September 1st, 2021 at 1:28 pm
It’s for a TE and or others before trade deadline. smart move.
OJ is not even close to a safe bet and dare I say Gronk is getting up there in the years…..let’s hope he stays healthy.
September 1st, 2021 at 1:34 pm
Mike is the man.
September 1st, 2021 at 1:44 pm
When Mike decides he wants to get paid, I don’t want to hear a peep here. The man has sacrificed much for this team.
September 1st, 2021 at 1:54 pm
I’d like to see us work out a Jensen restructure or lock down Cappa with an extension now. We need to assure our Oline going forward.
I can’t think of a better way to spend that money…..other than Godwin…& I simply don’t think we can pay him more than Mike…& he’ll want that.
September 1st, 2021 at 1:59 pm
Everyone seems to think Mike gave them 9mill. I’m not contract expert, but I can almost guarantee that is not the case. Just in sales….some people get 120 and 20 in bonus
others get less on the front end with more topside money. Mike has to be getting something from this as well. I don’t care how great a person is…..that would be unfair, and not a good way to long term team success.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:09 pm
@ Bird
Mickens and McElroy to the PS is great news… We will probably need both at some point this season.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:15 pm
Andrew Adams is back….signed to the PS…..along with Adams, we have several on the PS who have SB rings……Mickens, Griffin & others who were on our PS last year.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:18 pm
We also got S Andrew Adams back.
Plus interesting to note – RB Darwin Thompson has joined the Bucs PS instead of Kansas City’s PS… Watch out Keysaun Vaughn. This is your eventual replacement if you fumble one more time.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:25 pm
ME13 just wants to win. I think if he and LVD run it back this year we should be talking greatest Bucs of all time. Even in the miserable decade, we still had those two guys competing every week. Thank you Mr Evans.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:26 pm
If I’m reading this correctly, Evans is now basically on a 3-year deal, and will be nearly impossible to resign after that.
As far as the void years go, the Bucs are really putting themselves in a hole down the road, and one that will last likely a few years once it hits. Personally, I’m 100% fine with that, but people need to realize what is happening and not whine and complain in 2024 when ‘cap hell’ hits in full force.
From the Bucs standpoint they might be thinking the cap really shoots up, so maybe it won’t be as big of a deal as it might appear. I don’t believe that will be the case, but again, I don’t care. You have a window, use as much of it as possible, unlike the idiot Gruden who yelled about ‘cap hell’ when the Bucs weren’t actually anything close to strapped, he just wanted a reason to run off Sapp and Lynch and anyone else who took the spotlight away from him.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:31 pm
Maybe they should sign Cam Newton now.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:31 pm
@ rod
“will be nearly impossible to sign after that”
How so? This will be his 8th season. You don’t think we will be able to sign him after year 10?
or you think he will be too old to re-sign after that?
September 1st, 2021 at 2:32 pm
Also, for all those thinking Evans took a pay cut, you’re wrong. He’s just restructuring the way he’s getting paid, and he’s getting a bunch of money up front as a thanks for doing it. You could do this with any veteran, but you want to do it with guys who you know are going to be here for a while, also you want to work with guys who aren’t going to try to turn a restructure into a raise.
Evans is great with his willingness to work with the team to do this, but don’t confuse a restructure with cut. He converted his base salary into a signing bonus, spread over 5-years, but he gets that entire bonus up front — the 5-years part is for the sake of the salary cap.
If you want to give props to anyone, give it to the Glazers for being willing to do all these expensive void-year contracts this offseason. It’s a lot of cash out of pocket for owners that 99% of the people here called cheap year after year (even if you couldn’t explain who they should be spending money on).
September 1st, 2021 at 2:37 pm
Marine Buc – I’m not 100% on this as void year deals are new to me, and most of the NFL, but there’s some sort of language that makes it extremely expensive to resign guys once you use void years. Again, don’t quote me on this, and I need to look it up, but I believe the player can’t sign a new deal for less than their last deal — something like that. Maybe it’s just the yearly salary, in which case it’s possible they could bring him back, but I thought it was more about the total salary.
Taysom Hill has that ridiculous 140-million dollar deal, and it was done with void years. The agent did that to protect the player in case they became the starter and the Saints wanted him back, they’d have to pay him as a starter.
In fairness I might be completely wrong about void years, I need to read up more, but I’m going based off what I’ve heard ‘experts’ say.
September 1st, 2021 at 2:41 pm
I want Evans to get two more Super Bowl rings and can I buy tickets to when he’s inducted in the ring of honor? Put me on the waiting list
September 1st, 2021 at 2:41 pm
Added note— The Super Bowl I hope he has 100 yards and 2TD’s
September 1st, 2021 at 3:16 pm
I chuckle over the responses of these worked out deals. People say, “MiKe EvAnS iS sO uNsElFiSh!!!” Wake me up when he does a solid for the team and takes less money. Otherwise, he’s not making a dime less.
Rod Munch is spot on with all of this.
September 1st, 2021 at 3:35 pm
@Rod Munch Says:
“..Evans is great with his willingness to work with the team to do this, but don’t confuse a restructure with cut. He converted his base salary into a signing bonus, spread over 5-years, but he gets that entire bonus up front …..”
——————–
..that is NOT entirely true, based on this report:
“..The Buccaneers will create as much as $8.94 million in cap space….Tampa Bay will add two void years to spread the new bonus over five years instead of the remaining three. Tampa Bay is taking his base salary of $12.25 million and shifting it to a veteran minimum $1.075 million base salary and $11.18 million in bonus…”
so..
-the new bonus $11.1M/5years = $2.236M per year.
-minimum veteran salary $1.075 per year
So Mike is making this year $3.311M out of $12.25M
..creating a cap space –> $12.25M – $3.311 = $8.939M
IMO Glazers have no credit on this, this is ALL Mike sacrificing his pocket.
Great guy, great team mate.
September 1st, 2021 at 4:16 pm
crazyBucs_CL – that’s now how it works.
Mike is getting $11.1-million up front as a bonus, plus his salary of $1.075m. The per year number is purely for salary cap purposes – the cash is paid up front on that bonus.
Mike was making $12.2m before this, paid out weekly over 17 weeks. Now he is getting $11.1-million today, and the $1.075m is paid out weekly.
Again, Evans has offered to do whatever he can to help the team out – and he’s awesome for that, but he’s not taking less money, in fact he’s getting more up front. Also, again, the credit goes to the Glazers for doing all these contracts that demand a lot of cash up front.
These things can be confusing, so I’m not giving you a hard time on it, but just explaining how that part of the deal works.
What I don’t know is how resigning someone works when they’re still under ‘void’ years – since Evans contract is really a 3-year deal, with 2 void years, for the purpose of spreading out the cap hit of the bonus. My understanding is that NFL has some language in their deals that makes difficult to sign a new deal since it must exceed the value of the void contract — but I’m not sure if that’s total or per year. The information on void year deals seems to be kinda sketchy, so I’m clearly stating I’m not sure about that part. If anyone knows for sure, and isn’t just guessing, please let me know with an explanation.
September 1st, 2021 at 4:17 pm
*not how it works…
September 1st, 2021 at 4:17 pm
INCOMING: CORNERBACK
September 1st, 2021 at 4:52 pm
DarrennFells was released by Detroit. Would be good 4th Tight end option. Can block and decent receiver.
September 1st, 2021 at 5:00 pm
I heard all 53 players count in the salary cap when the season begins. And that certainly would make fitting under the cap even more difficult,
September 1st, 2021 at 5:06 pm
Further, I believe during the offseason, 51 players count towards the cap “rule of 51” as they used to say. Then after pre-season the other two players contracts are included under the cap.
September 1st, 2021 at 8:12 pm
Giving ROjO an extension
September 1st, 2021 at 9:10 pm
Straight cash homie of course I’ll take it up front.
September 1st, 2021 at 11:51 pm
Players get way too much credit for “team first” moves like being given millions of dollars up front. It is all completely ridiculous. Love the sport, but a million a week to pay a game is lunacy.