Man, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are going to keep using and abusing those voidable years.
Tom Brady signed a one-year extension with the Bucs, allowing him to pursue that goal of playing until he’s 45 years old, which would give him the title of “oldest starting quarterback ever.” The signing was made official by Brady himself on Twitter Friday afternoon.
The deal includes three additional voidable years, a move that allows the Bucs to get back under the cap. The Bucs were about $7.75 million over the cap following Chris Godwin getting franchise tagged.
The move is the second time the Bucs have used voidable years to try to fix their rough cap situation, as Lavonte David signed a two-year extension worth $25 million, but will only count against the cap for $3.5 million due to using three voidable years.
In case you forgot, "voidable years" basically work like this: A player’s cap hit is a total of their annual salary and their signing bonus. Their signing bonus is usually spread out over the duration of the years they actually play on whatever team they’re signed with, but the voidable years method—used in recent years by the Saints and Eagles, who are now feeling the awful effects of abusing it, much like a hangover—allows teams to stretch a player’s signing bonus, and thus their salary cap hit, over several years, even if the player isn’t still on the roster.
Another less notable signing the Bucs took care of was re-signing linebacker Kevin Minter to a one-year deal, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, giving the Bucs another year of solid linebacker depth and a great special teams guy.
The last dominos to fall for the Bucs are still Shaq Barrett, Gronk, Ndamokung Suh, Ryan Succop, Leonard Fournette, and Antonio Brown.
If the Bucs are able to re-sign even three of those guys it’d be a miracle, but expect them to continue to use more of those voidable years on whatever deals they make, as even with Brady’s restructuring of his contract, the Bucs still only have about $7 million in cap space left.
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This article appears in Mar 18-24, 2021.