The New York Jets are clearly going all-in for 2024. That will come at a huge potential cost, potentially making 2025 a dead year.
The Jets have made four key acquisitions in the last three seasons: Aaron Rodgers, Javon Kinlaw, Tyron Smith, and now Haason Reddick. Those moves could be the difference in winning a Super Bowl. However, winning that Super Bowl may make 2025 and 2026 rebuild years. Also, 2025 might be a dead year, especially in terms of regression in their win-loss record.
Let’s dive in, first with understanding how incentives work in the NFL. For cap purposes, there are two types of incentives. Whether or not incentives hit the cap is based on the previous season. Likely to be earned incentives are ones that were achieved the previous season. Those hit the cap the year of the incentive. If they go unearned, they are credited back the following season. Not likely to be earned incentives are ones not achieved in the previous season. If those do get earned, they hit the cap the following season
What is the cost of going all-in and winning the Super Bowl for the Jets? Let’s look.
Javon Kinlaw
Kinlaw signed a 1 year, $7.25 million contract with the Jets. The signing bonus is $5.5 million. The base salary for 2024 is $1.41 million, and the per-game roster bonus is $340,000. It also has four void years to spread out the $5.5 million. The prorated signing bonus only counts $1.1 million this year.
If Kinlaw were to sign elsewhere in 2025, his void years would accelerate into 2025. That would be a cost of $4.4 million in cap space next season.
Haason Reddick
According to Jason Fitzgerald, it is likely the Eagles will restructure his contract.
My assumption is they will redo the deal and bring his salary down to the minimum and add 4 void years. So probably will wind up being around $4M
— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) March 29, 2024
If they add four void years, then that will result in a dead cap hit of $10.432 million for 2025. That’s if the Jets don’t extend him or re-sign him before the contract voids.
Total Going all-in cost: $14.832 million
Tyron Smith
Note: As of now, it has not been made official exactly how the incentives are being handled.
Albert Breer of MMQB was the first to report the breakdown of Tyron Smith’s incentives for the Jets.
Jets OT Tyron Smith's 1-year, $6.5 million deal.
• $6.5 million fully guaranteed.
• Up to $5.75 million in 1st play-time incentive.
• Up to $6.25 million in 2nd play-time incentive.
• $250K per playoff win ($1M max).
• $500K Pro Bowl incentive.Max: $20 million.
More ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/2LXcRWl6aa
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) March 19, 2024
Since, typically incentives are LTBE and NLTBE, for now, it’s likely $5.75 million in LTBE incentives for Smith, because according to Pro Football Reference, he played in 71.54% of the Cowboys snaps in 2023. If he reaches his playing time incentives, and the Jets win the Super Bowl, that would add $7.75 million to next year.
Total going all-in cost so far: $22.582 million
Aaron Rodgers
This one is the backbreaker. When the Jets traded for Rodgers, the new deal included a $35 million signing bonus and a $35 million option bonus for 2024. Void years were added to space out the hit. The problem becomes if he were to decide to retire after winning a Super Bowl and go out on a high note. The signing bonus and option bonus would have $7 million each for 2025-27, and the option bonus would hit for one more season for another $7 million. That total would be $49 million.
Going all-in for 2024 total: $71.582 million
Many Jets fans clamored for the Rodgers trade. Well, this is the result. They’ve also clamored for Woody Johnson to come out with a playoff mandate. Well, that’s not enough. It’s Super Bowl or bust for the Jets in 2024.
Main Photo: [Kirby Lee] – USA Today Sports
