Philly Front Office

WARNING: EXTREME NERDERY AHEAD

This week, it was reported that Travis Kelce re-signed with the Kansas City Chiefs for 3/$52m. Everyone had the same reaction when they saw it, shock. Why would the Chiefs give a 36-year-old a new 3-year contract when he was already contemplating retirement? The easy answer is, they didn’t.

Turns out with Kelce specifically, he is really receiving a 1/$12m deal with a $40m poison pill that activates on June 8th, 2027. This allows the team to either renegotiate the deal or more likely for Kelce to retire then pro rate the rest of his cap hit over the ’27 and ’28 seasons. There is ZERO chance that $40m ever gets paid since it was designed to never get paid. They could have made it a 3 year $112m deal and it would have been the same thing. It’s not just with Kelce either.

Do You Realize What DeVonta Smith Did for the Eagles?

Sauce Gardner

It is understandable when contracts are reported with unguaranteed years on the end that the player will likely never see. For example, when Sauce Gardner received his 4/$120.4m contract from the Jets, that contract came with $29.1m non-guaranteed salaries for 2029 and 2030. These contract terms are at least conceivable, even if he is unlikely to actually play on those salaries for one reason or another.

I picked Sauce for a reason. When he signed his reported 4/$120.4m deal it came with $120.4m in new money. The Jets had already picked up his 5th year option at $20m, so he was receiving that money IN ADDITION to his $120m. These were true extension terms. The press could have easily said this was a 5 year, $140m deal. Why didn’t they? Because Derek Stingley had signed a 3/$90m extension that set $30m AAV has the new high AAV bar for CBs. 5/$140m means a $28m AAV and thus wouldn’t be considered a record. It was honest though.

Jordan Davis

The relevant reason I am writing this is because of Jordan Davis and his reported 3/$78m extension. Davis was set to receive a 5th year option just like Sauce, except his was $13m. I figured that money would get restructured and join the new signing bonus in getting pro-rated over the next 5 years, standard fair. That’s not what happened though. That’s where things get screwy. Here are his total paydays coming up (rounded to $.25m):

• 2026: $1.25m
• Signing Bonus: $18.75m
• Other Bonuses: $1.5m
• 2027: $18.5m
• 2028: $25.5m
• 2029: $25.5m

That’s $91m, perfectly lining up with the $78m extension plus his $13m salary. It shouldn’t though. The signing bonus plus the money on the extension is $89.75m. Why wasn’t it reported like that? Instead, we get that he received 3 extra years and $78m more dollars, those just aren’t the actual terms of the contract in the slightest though. This is very different from how the Sauce contract was reported. Davis should have been reported at 4/$91m considering his 2026 cash has been officially absorbed into the transaction in the form of the signing bonus. Alternatively, if that money isn’t part of the extension, then the signing bonus should only be $7m. $22.75m AAV sounds better for the team than $26m, right? Except this way, it looks like the Eagles are paying Davis the same amount that they didn’t pay Milton Williams the year before when he signed for 4/$104m in New England.

Eagles Salary Cap Situation Post Free Agency

Saquon and DeVonta

Is my ADHD rattled brain splitting hairs here? Absolutely! I can’t help it. The REAL reasons I wanted to write this are the Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith and his contract. I recently wrote how it was a steal, but it’s even better/worse than you realize.

Last year, Barkley signed a 2/$41m extension on top of the 3/$37.75m deal he signed the year before. Is that extension even close to honest? No way. He received no signing bonus and his compensation for those two years is $33.5m total. Where is that other $8m? Well, it was added to 2025 and 2026. Even worse was the reported $36m in guaranteed money. You would think that that means that most of that $41m reported extension was guaranteed, right? Wrong. Instead, it was his the previous and new money he was getting in 2025 and 2026 (plus $2.5m in 2027). The reported contract was completely misleading. His first contract had $26m in guarantees. These new guarantees did not add up to $62m. Instead, it is more like $49m total.

Before beginning his 4th season, Smith had his 5th year option picked up at $15.5m and signed his 3/$75m extension the next day. The deal came with a $20.25m signing bonus plus minimum salaries and option bonuses the whole way. Yearly compensation looks like this:

• Signing Bonus: $20.25m
• Other Bonuses: $3.25m
• 2026: $13.25m
• 2027: $21.25m
• 2028: $22m

Wait, that’s $80m. In signing the deal, his $15.5m option was cut down to a $12.5m in compensation for 2025. That means 4/92.5m. EXCEPT THERE’S MORE. His minimum 4th year salary came with a $2.5m roster bonus that completely disappeared. So, he also gave back $5m? Are we down to 5/$90m? Is it 3/$75m because he took away compensation from his 4th and 5th years? It’s a mess. But it also shows that DeVonta Smith is the man and everyone should know it!

Am I the only one who is bothered by this stuff? It happens all the time too. Almost every NFL contract is misreported to the masses and then analyzed incorrectly because of it. This is especially true of extensions. While free agent contracts are decently straight forward, extensions are the wild west.

Contracts: Spotrac

Photo: Kiel Leggere