NEWSLETTER
The Chicago Bears are among the teams set to pick up some additional cap room starting today.
Here’s the news from ESPN’s Field Yates:
Four teams are set to gain cap space tomorrow as a result of post-June 1 cuts earlier this offseason:
* Bears: $2.8M (Trey Burton)
* Falcons: $10.75M (Desmond Trufant)
* Jets: $11M (Trumaine Johnson)
* Rams: $5.5M (Todd Gurley)— Field Yates (@FieldYates) June 1, 2020
Newfound cap space for the Bears (as well as the Falcons, Jets, and Rams) comes in the form of a post-June 1 cut. Cuts that fall under the post-June 1 category can have their remaining cap charge spread over two seasons (instead of one). If this feels familiar, the Bears did something similar when they cut kicker Cody Parkey last year, doing so in order to soften the blow of his cap hit over two years rather than taking it all up front. They also picked up a cool $1 million in cap space in the process.
For Chicago, it’s tight end Trey Burton, whose post-June 1 cut designation clears up an additional $2.8 million in cap space. This cut still comes with a $5.75 million hit in dead money and comes with a $1.75 million cap charge in 2021. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, to be sure. But on the bright side, OverTheCap.com currently has the Bears with $11 million in available cap space. Seeing that Chicago has been floating around $9 million in available cap room in recent weeks, every bit of cap space helps. Yes, even if it is as small as the nearly $3 million they’ll gain from parting ways with Burton.
What the Bears will do with this extra wiggle room remains to be seen. Some of it could go toward signing members of their rookie class. But some could be allotted to signing a free agent who could bolster a perceived soft spot on the roster.
