Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said his team will make a splash in free agency, even though it ranks among the teams with the least amount of cap room.
How will the Ravens make that happen?
"Like always, you renegotiate contracts to create space, which we probably will do a little bit of that again this year," Bisciotti said. "You’re hopefully doing it with people like [defensive tackle] Brandon Williams, who you know are going to be here. But it is a trick of the trade, and everybody does it, and it’s in our contract language."
Restructuring contracts was once deemed by general manager Ozzie Newsome "a last resort." This isn't cutting pay. This is taking a chunk of a player's salary and converting it into a bonus or up-front money, so the player doesn't lose any money. It's a way for the team to free more cap space this year by adding more burden to the cap in future years, which can lead to trouble if you're not careful.
Right now, Baltimore has $10.4 million in cap space, according to OverTheCap.com. Only the Philadelphia Eagles, Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins have less room than the Ravens.
"[The players are] not doing anybody a favor by restructuring their deal -- the great misnomer," Bisciotti said. "We’ll do what we have to do to fill our roster through the draft and through free agency. We’ve got some money, and we can create some more, so I’m not too worried about that right now."
Baltimore can theoretically create as much as $26.9 million in cap space by restructuring deals. There are six players who will make over $5 million in salary with at least one additional year on their contracts.
The Ravens can free up room from Williams ($5.625 million), quarterback Joe Flacco ($8.25 million), cornerback Jimmy Smith ($4 million), safety Tony Jefferson ($3.33 million), guard Marshal Yanda ($3 million) and safety Eric Weddle ($2.75 million).
If the Ravens restructured all of these contracts -- which is unlikely -- they would increase those players' cap numbers for future years, adding a total of $16 million to their 2019 cap. For Flacco, the Ravens can reduce his $12 million salary to $1 million (which means he would get $11 million up front) and the team would spread that $11 million over the remaining four years of his contract. It would add $2.75 million to his cap figures, which mean his cap numbers would jump to $29.25 million in 2019, $31 million in 2020 and $27 million in 2021.
Realistically, the top candidates to get restructured are Williams and Jefferson. Baltimore can open up almost $9 million in cap space and tack on less than $2 million to each of Williams' and Jefferson's remaining years.
"The only time we consider restructuring guys’ deals is [if] there is a player that comes available that we think has great value and is worth us restructuring a deal to get it done," Newsome said in 2013. "But it has to be a player that we think has a pretty good chance of playing out his contract, because that’s when you get in trouble. If you restructure a deal, then all the sudden that player’s abilities fall off the cliff and you have to let him go, then you have to eat all that acceleration right away."
Last year, the Ravens restructured the contracts of Smith and Williams to create $7.2 million in cap space. Baltimore appears set to do the same this offseason.