We now know the structure of Alex Smith's contract with the Redskins

February Twitter reports told us that Alex Smith’s deal would have $94m of money in the extension to go with his $17m base salary from the KC contract, making a total 5 year package of $111m. We heard that there were $71m in total guarantees.

We later heard that the deal would have $55m guaranteed at signing, and $71m guaranteed by 2019.

Today we got the information needed to figure out what the Redskins have done:

Only one structure fits all of these parameters.

The ‘Skins converted $4m of 2018 pay to signing bonus

The Redskins converted $4m of Alex Smith’s 2018 salary to signing bonus.

• Net effect = 17m – 4m = base salary of $13m
• 27m signing bonus /5 years = 5.4m per year
• 13m base salary + 5.4m signing bonus = 2018 cap hit of $18.4m
• That’s also why all the cap hits end with .4

This is consistent with what we were told — $71m in guarantees by 2019 with 55m fully guaranteed at signing.

• This means that 2018 & 2019 base salaries are fully guaranteed (13m + 15m + 27m = 55m)
• The 2020 salary is a roster guarantee that is triggered in 2019 (55 + 16 = 71)

Albert Breer reports that the 2020 salary becomes fully guaranteed next March, so the Redskins could make a quick decision to cut Smith after the 2018 season, but it would be prohibitively expensive.

The realistic scenario is that the Redskins could trade or release Alex Smith after his 3rd season with the team (2020) with a dead cap of only $10.8m.

The dead cap after 4 seasons would be $5.4m.

UPDATE

Here’s the OverTheCap version, with all the dead cap and cap savings numbers included: