Contract Details For Robert Ayers
March 15th, 2016
Yes, your Tampa Bay Buccaneers are shelling out significant Team Glazer cash to Robert Ayers, their latest contestant in the Michael Bennett-Simeon Rice home game.
Per NJ Advanced Media, where they’ve closely covered the movements of the former Giant defensive end, here are the terms of Ayers’ deal with the Bucs.
DE Robert Ayers (Bucs)
Terms: 3 years, $21 millionTotal guarantee: $10.5 million
Base salaries:
2016 – $5 million
2017 – $4 million
2018 – $5 millionSigning bonus: N/A
Roster bonuses:
2016 – $2.5 million
2017 – $2 million
2018 – $1 million
(Note: 2017 and ’18 to due on fifth day of league year)
So, Ayers will rope in $7.5 million this season. Incentives and, possibly, a signing bonus, account for the $1.5 million discrepancy between the total contract versus the base salaries + roster bonuses.
Not too shabby.
Joe’s hoping Ayers earns no more than $1 million per sack, which would be an NFL bargain these days.
March 15th, 2016 at 8:58 am
Not bad, affordable. After seeing what the Giants payed for a one hit wonder I feel a lot better about Ayers contract.
March 15th, 2016 at 8:59 am
That’s not actually a bad deal for the Bucs.
Licht IMPRESSED ME with this contract.
No one have a heart attack.
March 15th, 2016 at 8:59 am
@Supersam
Ayers is a one hit wonder too, you know, lol.
March 15th, 2016 at 9:06 am
BB, no one said he wasn’t. However, we didn’t shell out 15mil for him.
March 15th, 2016 at 9:19 am
There’s a big difference in paying a one hit wonder 21 million, and paying a one hit wonder 80 million lol
March 15th, 2016 at 9:23 am
I also find it suspicious that Vernon had his best year with Suh eating up all the double teams. He’s not worth 80 mill Giants will regret that decision.
March 15th, 2016 at 9:53 am
What some people tend to forget is besides Olivier Vernon not being close to worth $80 million, Jason Pierre-Paul and William Hayes both wanted to stay at home while Mario Williams wanted to spend his time in South Beach. At this point the only FA edge defenders left are Greg Hardy and Dwight Freeney. We are very lucky to have secured the services of Robert Ayers and at a reasonable rate. If we surround Ayers with other quality defensive linemen I really believe he can duplicate or even surpass last years sack numbers. DE and DT in the first two rounds.
March 15th, 2016 at 10:04 am
Starting to warm up to the idea of Sheldon Rankins 1st round get that interior rush with ayers n jack smith coming from the outside and our lightning quick backers covering short passes, 2nd round DE like Shilique Calhoun let him get coached up and bring along slowly, 3rd top corner available to learn from maxie, we don’t need immediate starters on defense, we need players that grow into 2nd contract players
March 15th, 2016 at 1:00 pm
I’m liking the way Jason Licht is structuring the contracts to protect the Bucs for future salary cap restraints.
March 15th, 2016 at 3:26 pm
[Darin/d-roca: Please stick with your original username. Joe fixed it for you. — Joe]
Ayers, grimes and sweezy for the price of olivier vernon. Nicely done licht.
March 15th, 2016 at 10:05 pm
Licht will not get burned again. He learned from yr 1, that you don’t give big guaranteed contracts to FAs. He is front loading them and having the players earn their second and third year. Smart move and exactly what i’ve come to expect from Mr. Licht.
March 16th, 2016 at 12:06 am
Or we could’ve just never let Bennett and Talib go because we hired a completely unqualified coach, and we wouldn’t be forced to overpay for players like Ayers and Grimes.
March 16th, 2016 at 1:16 am
Bucs have been paying players up front so if (and generally when) they cut them later they don’t get themselves stuck in salary cap hell. It’s a holdover from the post-SB days. Then again considering the success they’ve had since the SB days, perhaps they should just go back to worrying about now and not tomorrow.
Anywho if you want to see a great example of a team that is terrible at salary cap management go checkout the Eagles on Overthecap, don’t look at this year, look at next year. They have the least amount of money available for next year already and they have a ton of contracts which will make it very difficult to cut anyone to free up space. The Bucs don’t need to worry about that, they got the 2nd most cap room next year (behind the Broncos, but they only had 22 players under contract) and the Bucs can cut a bunch of players with zero penalties as well, they can even cut players like Ayers with zero cost. That’s good cap management, assuming you know you’re willing to pay huge up front costs.