Aaron Wilson, as usual, comes through with the details on this extension:
Todd Davis Broncos deal: $15M, $6M gtd, $3M signing bonus, salaries $3M (gtd), $4M, $5M
— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) March 15, 2018
This contract table will be very simple, so let’s get right to it:
| Year | Base Salary | Prorated Bonus | Cap Number | Dead Money/Cap Savings (pre-June 1 cut) |
|
| 2018 | $3,000,000 | $1,000,000 | $4,000,000 | $6,000,000 | ($2,000,000) |
| 2019 | $4,000,000 | $1,000,000 | $5,000,000 | $2,000,000 | $3,000,000 |
| 2020 | $5,000,000 | $1,000,000 | $6,000,000 | $1,000,000 | $5,000,000 |
There really isn’t much to elaborate on here, so a few quick points:
- While this contract is 3 years in length, the structure effectively makes it a 1 year deal, $6 million deal, as both 2019 and 2020 can be escaped from very easily with little dead money consequences.
- For this reason, I expect (but do not yet know) the Broncos to have inserted option year clauses in 2019 and 2020, to keep Davis in the compensatory pick pool should they decide to part ways.
- On the one hand, paying $5 million APY and $6 million in Year 1 is something I felt would be too rich earlier in the offseason. But on the other hand, the traditional linebacker contracts in this round of free agency have gone off the rails. (For one, did you see the insane contract the Chiefs gave to Anthony Hitchens?) Those contracts pushed Davis’s value up, thus I now think that this is a fair deal for him.
- This deal does not preclude the Broncos from addressing inside linebacker with a rookie should they so choose. Furthermore, if a young player proves to be better than Davis either during the 2018 regular season, or during 2019 training camp in preseason, the Broncos will be in fine position to part ways with Davis, or push for a pay cut.