Bruce Irvin cap charge almost $6M. Where’s that leave Seahawks with Jadeveon Clowney?
Bruce Irvin is costing the Seahawks more than expected. But that cost is not prohibitive.
Not to them possibly re-signing Jadeveon Clowney—or adding another veteran pass rusher they still truly need.
Irvin’s one-year contract the team announced last month carries a salary-cap charge of $5.91 million for 2020, according to overthecap.com and confirmed in multiple other outlets.
Irvin, who will turn 33 this fall, gets $5 million guaranteed: $2.5 million in guaranteed salary, a $2 million signing bonus and a $500,000 roster bonus. He also is receiving $500,000 in per-game roster bonuses the Seahawks like to add as incentives to veteran contracts.
The $5.91 million is Seattle’s eighth-highest cap charge for this year. It’s behind Russell Wilson ($31 million), Bobby Wagner ($14.75M), Duane Brown ($12.6M), Tyler Lockett ($12.25M), K.J. Wright ($10M), Jarran Reed ($9.35M) and Greg Olsen ($6.91M).
Irvin got a raise of more than 25 percent from the $4 million he earned last year with Carolina. He had a career-high 8 1/2 sacks in his only season with the Panthers. His higher-than-expected contract also reflects how much they like their first-round pick from 2012 that won a Super Bowl with them in their first go-round together.
And it shows how desperate the Seahawks are to improve a pass rush that was the league’s second-worst in 2019. Only Miami had fewer sacks than Seattle’s 28 last season. Coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider have said their top offseason priority is re-signing Clowney and improving the pass rush.
Irvin’s deal leaves the Seahawks with $16.15 million in salary-cap space entering the later stages of free agency.
OK, now into the weeds on cap space.
Seattle’s $16.15 million in space does not count the $5.1 million the team needs to keep in reserve for the signings of their eight selections in last month’s draft (they’ve yet to announce a signing of a pick, though those are coming). Only the top four of those eight picks—Jordyn Brooks, Darrell Taylor, Damien Lewis and Colby Parkinson—count against the cap from now until the day of the first NFL game day, Sept. 10. That’s the NFL’s “top-51 rule”; only the top 51 players in cap space count against the cap all offseason and preseason.
The final four drafted Seahawks—DeeJay Dallas, Alton Robinson, Freddie Swain and Stephen Sullivan—don’t count against the cap now because their slotted cap charges for this year is below the current 51st-highest cap number (offensive lineman Jamarco Jones, $736,251).
Teams also must keep about $2 million of cap space reserved for the practice squad. That’s 12 players at $10,500 each per week, over 17 weeks of the season including the bye. Then there’s the few players who inevitably go on injured reserve and get their roster spots replaced. Teams must keep contingency cap space for them.
So that $16.15 million in available cap space goes down to $11.05 million, then to $9.05 million, then a little less than that, for the IR contingency.
That’s not enough to re-sign Clowney, or add any other accomplished veteran pass rusher still on the market.
So what.
When teams want—need—to add a player, they find the cap space to do it. Always. It’s been that way since 1994, the beginning of the salary-cap era in the NFL.
Most often it’s by releasing veteran players with contracts that have outgrown their usefulness to the team. Justin Britt and D.J. Fluker are the latest Seahawks to experience that, the day after the draft ended last month.
But at this late stage of free agency, any further cuts of veterans making enough to substantially increase available cap space will particularly sting.
K.J. Wright has a $10 million cap charge for this year in the final year of his contract. He turns 31 in July. The Seahawks drafted the speedy Brooks in the first round to play linebacker, potentially at Wright’s weakside spot with Wright perhaps moving to strongside linebacker.
Wright is coming off one of his better seasons, a redemptive one in which he agrees he’s earned this second, non-guaranteed year of his two-year contract. He’s the longest-tenured Seahawk. He was the team’s 2018 “the door’s not closed” Award. That was for his work building houses in south Seattle, wells for clean water in Kenya and more.
You get the picture.
If they want to, the Seahawks could ask Wilson to convert much of his team-high $18 million salary into bonus money that the team could then prorate across the three years remaining on his $140 million contract. Schneider has done that before: during the 2017 season the GM and Wilson agreed to restructure $6.26 million of the quarterback’s base salary into a bonus. That freed the cap space the Seahawks needed to trade for the former All-Pro Brown to become their new left tackle in October 2017.
But Schneider and most teams’ GMs prefer to not kick cap-charge cans down the road. It adds unscheduled future costs. Doing that regularly puts a team in salary-cap hell in future years, handcuffing it from signing free agents it will need and upsetting the years of future cap planning it’s already done.
Point is, there are multiple ways for the Seahawks to find the space it needs to re-sign Clowney—if the three-time Pro Bowl edge rusher ultimately decides to do that—or to sign another pass rusher. That’s appears to be what the Seahawks need most to accomplish Carroll’s goal of home playoff games this coming season.
It’s why Carroll and Schneider keep saying, as the GM did a couple weeks ago, “the door’s not closed” on Clowney returning, despite him declining to sign Seattle’s multiyear offer from March.
“You know, I hope we can work something out, if anything happens,” Clowney told Mark Berman, the sports director at Fox 26 in Houston, in an interview televised this week. “I did like it up there. I love Russ (Russell Wilson). I love all the guys I played with. J. Reed, B. Jack, all them boys in my D (defensive-line) room.
“I respect them guys.”
“J. Reed” is Seahawks defensive tackle Jarran Reed. “B. Jack” is defensive end Branden Jackson. They got tight with Clowney in the 4 1/2 months after the Seahawks traded with the Houston Texans to acquire the pass rusher Sept. 1 through Seattle’s playoff loss at Green Bay.
Clowney went up to Schneider’s office the day after that defeat in January and told the GM he loved Seattle and the team’s locker room, and that he would love to find a way to re-sign.
If the money is right, of course.
“I loved Seattle when I was there this past year,” Clowney said again, on TV in Houston Tuesday. “I love everybody on that coaching staff. I wouldn’t trade those guys in (for anything).”
Clowney is waiting for the league’s and nation’s travel restrictions from the coronavirus to ease so he can go to other team’s facilities and get physical exams from their team doctors. He wants to prove medically, face to face with other teams, he is healthy following core-muscle surgery in January. He wants to prove himself medically worthy of a multiyear deal more toward the $17-20 million per year he’s been seeking. The pandemic has kept him from being able to leverage Seattle’s offer from months ago.
“It might have (affected this) a little more than I expected,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t know what people think, if they are thinking I am hurting because of what I went through, because of the core or previous years, or what they’ve heard. I don’t know.
“I just want to let people know I am ready. I am ready to go whenever the time comes. And whoever I sign with is going to get the best version of me.”
He can afford to wait. He’s not missing anything but teams’ virtual training on Zoom video calls. The offseason’s usual minicamps, organized team activities (OTAs) and all on-field work are postponed indefinitely if not canceled while team facilities across the league remain closed.
If he tires of waiting, or if he finally gets to shop but doesn’t get the money he wants elsewhere, the Seahawks are willing to wait with and for Clowney.
“Just staying in touch with him, he’s kind of patient with the time frames that are out there and all that,” Carroll said April 25. “But he knows that the Seahawks are a place that he had some success and that he had a really good time and he contributed to our club (in 2019) and all of that.
“That’s a pretty good feeling for him being out there, still. John will take care of it. If there’s an opportunity that makes sense, we’ll dive back in and pursue it.”
