Reactions about Chris Culliver being cut?

[That Guy]

he was released with post june 1 per kien (espn blog)

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by That Guy

he was released with post june 1 per kien (espn blog)

Ah you're right, so it is.

For those wondering how this works, here's the rundown.

When you release a player, you have to recognize any money you paid to him on your cap in the year you released him. In Culliver's case, we paid him a $5M signing bonus up front when he signed him to his 4 year deal. That $5M was to spread evenly to the cap over the course of the 4 years, meaning that each year on the roster the signing bonus was to count $1.25M each season (four seasons x 1.25M = $5M signing bonus).

He played one season for us, meaning we carried the first year's portion of that bonus last year. We still have 3 more years of it that still need to hit our cap books. When we released him, we're forced to carry all the rest of it, which is the remaining $3.75M.

The rules used to be that if you released a player after June 1, you could recognize one year's portion of the signing bonus on your cap this year, and the rest would go on the next year's cap. So if we released him after June 1, we would carry $1.25 on the 2016 cap, and then the remaining $2.5M on the 2017 cap.

But the NFL Players Association thought it was shitty that the player would hit the free agent market on June 1, when most teams had their rosters set. It meant the player wouldn't have much of a market. So they said how about we let you designate players as a post-June 1 release for cap purposes, but you can go ahead and release him now before June 1 so that he can hit the market and try to get the best deal. So they did that.

So Culliver gets released now, but for cap purposes only they treat him as being released after June 1. So the Redskins save his $9.25M salary this year, and carry $1.25M of dead cap money this year, thus freeing $8M in cap space in 2016.

They then will carry $2.5M in dead cap space for him in 2017.

There you have it, clear as mud. I would have preferred they take the full cap hit now, but it's of little consequence in the end.