Preparations for next season are (apparently) already underway for a Chicago Bears front office that needs to get creative across the board in order to be as competitive in 2020 as they were in 2018.
One way the Bears can do that is to create cap space in future seasons, by re-structuring some current contracts to make use of their available 2019 space. And one report has cornerback Kyle Fuller as one of the players whose deals were re-done with this in mind.
More from ESPN’s Field Yates.
With an eye towards creating cap space in 2020, several players had their contracted reworked yesterday, the final day to make use of 2019 space:
* 49ers C Weston Richburg
* Eagles DE Brandon Graham
* Eagles G Isaac Seumalo
* Saints DE Cam Jordan
* Bears CB Kyle Fuller— Field Yates (@FieldYates) December 29, 2019
Future forecasts suggest the Bears will begin anywhere between $1.8M and $6.2M over next year’s projected cap number, before this move. So you can presume this helped widen that gap in some way. Unfortunately, details of how the deal was re-worked and how it impacts future salary cap implications have not been shared just yet (we’ll update as soon as we know). But that doesn’t mean we can’t add some context in the meantime.
For reminder: Fuller signed a four-year offer sheet from the Packers in March 2018 that was worth $56 million overall with $18 in guarantees, which the Bears matched shortly thereafter to keep their top corner from taking his talents across state lines and into Wisconsin. His deal makes up 6.95 percent of the team’s cap and 5.43 percent of the team’s cash spending, per OTC (again, before this news).
But having one of the richest cornerback deals has its hurdles for a team that probably has its eyes on re-signing and extending others on the roster. So with that in mind, it is sensible to re-work some of Fuller’s deal now – likely, in the form of turning base salary and roster bonus money into a signing bonus – before addressing other needs later.
I know we don’t have the details just yet and that makes this complicated, but at face value, this looks like a wise move by the Bears front office, who are now taking advantage of their estimated$16,416,934 in available 2019 salary cap space.
We’ll keep an eye out for details as to how this impacts big-picture things as they become available.