Robert Mathis Tears Achilles, Out For Year
The Colts were already planning on being without edge rusher Robert Mathis for the first four games of the season, and now they’ll have to get used to being without him for longer than that. Multiple league sources tell Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk that Mathis suffered a torn Achilles tendon while working out in Atlanta last week, and will be sidelined for the entire 2014 season.
The NFL’s sack leader in 2013, Mathis has been a key part of the Colts’ defense for the last decade, averaging more than 10 sacks per season and earning spots in five Pro Bowls since emerging as a regular in 2004. However, following the suspension and the Achilles injury, his time in Indianapolis may be approaching an end.
The team could decide to place Mathis on the non-football injury list this season, since he didn’t suffer the injury in a team workout. That would mean the club could withhold his salary for this season, and then would have to decide whether to keep him around for next year, when he has a cap hit of $10.75MM for his age-34 season. Indianapolis could save $7MM in cap room by releasing him before the 2015 season.
For now, the Colts will have to find a way to get pressure on quarterbacks this season without their best pass rusher in the fold.
Dolphins Sign Kelvin Sheppard; Ellerbe To IR
After recording 100 tackles in his first season with the Dolphins, Dannell Ellerbe‘s second year with the team has been prematurely cut short. Head coach Joe Philbin confirmed today that Ellerbe would land on Miami’s season-ending injured reserve list after sustaining a hip injury in the club’s opener against the Patriots (link via James Walker of ESPN.com). The Dolphins will sign linebacker Kelvin Sheppard using the open roster spot vacated by Ellerbe.
Sheppard, 26, spent the 2013 season with the Colts after two years in Buffalo. His best season came in 2012, when he was a starter for the Bills and racked up 80 tackles to go along with a pair of sacks. Pro Football Focus’ grades (subscription required) suggest Sheppard has typically fared better against the pass than the run, scoring much better in pass coverage and as a pass rusher than as a run stopper.
As for Ellerbe, his $6MM base salary this year is fully guaranteed, but only a portion of next year’s $8.425MM salary is currently guaranteed, as Adam Caplan of ESPN.com tweets. Whether or not the linebacker returns to Miami for the 2015 season will depend in part on how his recovery goes, but his cap number figures to be considered as well.
NFC East Notes: Cowboys, Mathis, Barbre
Dez Bryant and the Cowboys appeared to be making progress toward a contract extension in the weeks leading up to the regular season, but the two sides didn’t reach an agreement before the team’s opener against the Niners yesterday. According to Rainer Sabin of the Dallas Morning News, Bryant said he still intends to table discussions during the season, but seemed disappointed that he and the team couldn’t work something out before that unofficial deadline.
“Truly, I really understand that this is a business,” Bryant said. “I only worry about the things that I can control.”
Here’s more from around the NFC East:
- Peter King of TheMMQB.com, who reported last week that the NFL encouraged multiple clubs around the league to consider Michael Sam as a practice squad candidate, writes today that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones denied that the league reached out to him to consider the rookie defensive end.
- An MRI on Eagles guard Evan Mathis revealed an MCL sprain of his right knee, a source tells Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The injury isn’t expected to end Mathis’ season, but it should sideline him for an extended period, so he may be a candidate for the IR list with the designation to return.
- Allen Barbre, who was stepping in for the suspended Lane Johnson, suffered a high ankle sprain during Sunday’s game and is also expected to miss multiple weeks, according to Adam Caplan of ESPN.com. With Johnson slated to miss the next three games, and Mathis and Barbre likely out for those contests as well, the Eagles will likely be forced to feature a makeshift offensive line for at least the rest of September.
- Ex-Falcons wideout Darius Johnson is looking for another shot with an NFL team, and has a workout lined up with the Giants this week, writes Vaughn McClure of ESPN.com.
Chargers Restructure Antonio Gates’ Deal
The Chargers have freed up some cap space by converting a portion of Antonio Gates‘ base salary for 2014 into a signing bonus, reports Brian McIntyre (via Twitter). According to McIntyre, the move creates $1.5MM in cap savings for San Diego.
Gates, who is listed as questionable for tonight’s game in Arizona with a hamstring injury, had been set to earn a base salary of $5MM this year, but that figure has been cut to $2MM. The new $3MM bonus will be prorated over the final two years of the contract, adding an extra $1.5MM to next year’s charge.
With Ladarius Green on the rise in San Diego and Gates entering his age-34 season, there’s a reasonable chance he’ll have to accept a pay cut or be released before the 2015 season. After the restructure, the veteran tight end has a cap number of about $9.76MM for next year, including a $5.9MM base salary and about $3.86MM in potential dead money.
Latest On Ray Rice
With the Ravens scheduled to play Week 2’s Thursday night game against the Steelers, running back Ray Rice is on track to return from his two-game suspension later this week, potentially rejoining his team on Friday. However, a new video from TMZ which shows Rice’s assault of his then-fiancée in an Atlantic City elevator, could potentially delay Rice’s return to action.
As Darin Gantt of Pro Football Talk wrote earlier today, if the NFL had yet to see the newly-public footage, the league could ultimately decide to re-open the case and reassess Rice’s punishment. Sure enough, as Chris Mortensen of ESPN.com tweets, the NFL released a statement today indicating that no one in the league office had seen the elevator video until now, despite having requested it from law enforcement earlier.
Jason La Canfora of CBSSports.com (Twitter links) reports that the Ravens also hadn’t seen the video until today, though a source said that Rice described what happened and didn’t “sugarcoat” details, meaning the description the team heard was in line with what the elevator footage showed.
While it may be true that the NFL and the Ravens hadn’t seen the video until this morning, the fact that TMZ was able to get its hands on the footage shows that it was obtainable, which raises some questions about how aggressive the league and the team were in attempting to view it.
It’s not clear yet whether the NFL will revisit Rice’s two-game suspension — the aforementioned statement about the video is the only comment the league has made so far. However, the NFL recently introduced a more punitive policy on domestic violence, which calls for a six-game ban for a first offense. With talk of a new drug policy retroactively wiping out current suspensions, it’s fair to wonder if the league will decide to retroactively add a few games to Rice’s ban, based on that new domestic violence policy.
Panthers Rework Charles Johnson’s Contract
The Panthers have created some cap space by once again restructuring the contract of defensive end Charles Johnson, according to Joseph Person of the Charlotte Observer. Person reports that the move creates $5.2MM in 2014 cap space for the team.
Johnson, 28, had been slated to earn a base salary of $8.75MM this season, but that figure has now been reduced to just $950K. The difference of $7.8MM has been converted to a signing bonus that will prorate over the final three years of the deal, for an average of $2.6MM per year.
While the restructure makes Johnson’s 2014 cap number – which dips from $16.42MM to $11.22MM – more palatable, it increases his cap hit for next year from $17.42MM to $20.02MM. It’s hard to imagine, given the cap constraints Carolina is already facing, that the team could keep Johnson at that figure, so another restructure or even a cut might be in the cards.
It’ll be an interesting situation to keep an eye on, since the Panthers will also have to make a decision on their other defensive end, Greg Hardy, who is playing the 2014 season under the franchise tag. Prior to the restructure of Johnson’s contract, he and Hardy had two of the top five largest 2014 cap hits in the NFL for defensive ends.
J.J. Watt, Texans Agree To Contract Extension
SUNDAY, 8:21am: Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk adds a couple of final details on Watt’s extension. In addition to setting forth Watt’s base salaries and roster bonuses for each year of the deal, Florio notes that, starting in 2016, the contract contains an annual $500,000 de-escalator, which will be triggered if Watt fails to complete offseason workouts. Based on that arrangement, Florio predicts that Watt is likely to remain a Texan until at least 2017, at which point the team can go year-to-year with him. Of course, what Jadeveon Clowney has accomplished–and how much he is being paid–at that time will have a significant impact on Houston’s decision-making.
TUESDAY, 8:28am: According to Andrew Brandt of TheMMQB.com (via Twitter), about $30.9MM of Watt’s new money is fully guaranteed at the time of his signing. The $51MM+ initially reported will all be fully guaranteed by the start of the 2016 league year — presumably, it’s guaranteed for injury only at this point.
TUESDAY, 12:47am: Watt’s six-year extension is worth $100MM, with $51.876MM in guaranteed money, tweets McClain. Again, we’ll have to await the specifics, but assuming it isn’t being artificially inflated, that’s a pretty massive figure.
TUESDAY, 12:30am: It’s been a productive long weekend for J.J. Watt and the Texans, who have agreed to terms on a new contract for the star defensive lineman, reports John McClain of the Houston Chronicle. According to McClain (via Twitter), after negotiating for weeks, the team and agent Tom Condon worked on a deal until late Monday night before reaching an agreement.
According to Chris Mortensen of ESPN.com (via Twitter), Watt’s new contract will be for six years and will be worth in the neighborhood of $99MM, including $51MM in guaranteed money. We’ll have to wait to see how much of that money is fully guaranteed, and how exactly the contract breaks down, but Mortensen’s report suggests Watt’s deal will surpass Mario Williams‘ six-year, $96MM pact, and will make him the NFL’s highest-paid defensive lineman. It should also keep him locked up through the 2021 season.
Because he was a first-round pick in 2011, Watt still had two years remaining on his rookie contract. The Wisconsin product had been set to earn a base salary of about $1.9MM in 2014, and the Texans also exercised their fifth-year option for 2015, worth $6.969MM. Considering the team could have had Watt for two more years at a bargain price and then would have had the option to use the franchise tag on him twice, the 25-year-old didn’t seem to have a lot of leverage. Still, it seems the club was motivated to lock up the league’s best defensive player rather than letting the situation drag on.
Since entering the league as the 11th overall pick in the 2011 draft, Watt has been a dominant force on the Texans’ defensive line, averaging more than 12 sacks per season, including 20.5 in 2012. Pro Football Focus’ advanced metrics (subscription required) paint a clear picture of the sort of elite defender Watt is, with the Texans lineman recording grades of +94.2 in ’12 and +99.8 last season. By comparison, the only other two 3-4 defensive ends to grade higher than +30.0 in a season during that span were Muhammad Wilkerson (+37.2 in 2012) and Calais Campbell (+34.1 in 2013).
By agreeing to a new deal before the regular season gets underway, Watt avoids having to wait until after the season to revisit the topic, since the Texans have a policy about not discussing extensions during the season. The former 11th overall pick had suggested a couple weeks ago that it would be “great” to get a new contract done before the season began, and it appears his camp and the club worked hard to make that happen.
With the deal, Watt becomes the third 2011 first-rounder to sign a long-term extension. Patrick Peterson of the Cardinals and Tyron Smith of the Cowboys also reached agreements on new contracts with their respective clubs.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Vested Veteran Salary Guarantees
A handful of veteran players were cut from their teams’ respective rosters today, and while different clubs have different reasons for shuffling their rosters, the looming vested veteran guarantee may have played a part in many of those moves. A vested veteran, or a player with at least four years of NFL experience, will have his 2014 base salary guaranteed for the year if he’s on an NFL team’s roster for the first game of the season.
That means that if a team decided after Week 1 to part ways with a veteran player with a 2014 base salary of $1MM, the team would still be on the hook for that full $1MM, which would count against the cap. A veteran who has received this form of termination pay in the past wouldn’t be eligible to receive it again, but otherwise the player can put in a claim for his full salary and receive it. Veterans not a Week 1 roster don’t benefit from that provision, however.
If a player is signed during the season, following a team’s first game, and is later released, he’s only entitled to 25% of his full-season salary. For instance, let’s say a team signed a player in Week 2 for a full-year salary of $1.02MM. First, that salary would be prorated for 16 weeks, meaning it’d be worth $960K. If a player is cut shortly after signing, he’d receive 25% of that amount, or $240K. If the player is released within four weeks of signing, he’d only count for $240K against his team’s cap, rather than the amount of his full salary.
As such, we could see veteran players who were released by teams within the last few days re-sign with those clubs next week, when their full-season salaries will no longer be guaranteed and teams can retain maximum roster flexibility.
Note: This is a PFR Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to free agency, trades, or other aspects of the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Information from Over The Cap was used in the creation of this post.
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Lions Re-Sign Darryl Tapp
SATURDAY, 2:40pm: Tapp’s contract with the team will pay him $855,000 in base salary, and will count $570,000 agains the salary cap, reports Michael Rothstein of ESPN (via Twitter).
TUESDAY, 3:44pm: The Lions initially signed edge defender Darryl Tapp during the first week of free agency this offseason, and now the team is bringing him back during the first week of the regular season. According to Tim Twentyman of DetroitLions.com (via Twitter), the club has re-signed Tapp, placing rookie linebacker Kyle Van Noy on the injured reserve list with the designation to return in order to clear an active roster spot.
Tapp, who turns 30 this month, is coming off his least productive season, as he recorded just 10 tackles and one sack for Washington in 2013, well below his respective career highs of 55 and seven. Although he saw plenty of playing time during stints with the Seahawks and Eagles earlier in his career, Tapp probably won’t be more than a reserve defender for Detroit.
As for Van Noy, the second-round pick will be eligible to begin practicing after Week 6, and can return to game action after Week 8.