Seven Detroit Lions players’ contracts will automatically expire on Friday, creating a dead cap of more than $14 million.
The contracts of seven separate Detroit Lions players will automatically expire on Friday, five days after the Super Bowl. This was anticipated since the Lions utilized 2024 as a year of automatic voiding to help distribute the budget hit of individual contracts across a number of years. (Note: To observe the operation of a voided year,
The contracts of the following players expire on Friday: Teddy Bridgewater, quarterback; Charles Harris, EDGE Romeo Okwara; Graham Glasgow, G. Halapoulivaati Vaitai; CB Emmanuel Moseley; S. C.J. Gardner-Johnson.
To be clear, this does not mean that these players can sign with any team at any time because their contracts will be nullified. When the new league year begins on March 13, they will have the same freedoms as any other player whose contract is about to expire: they will be unrestricted free agents. Similar to those players, these players with voided contracts are currently able to negotiate (and sign, if desired) a new contract with the Lions. But even if Detroit decides to resign any of them this year, this dead cap was always going to be in place until 2024. It cannot be taken out or changed.
The whole amount of each player’s cap hit that will be recorded whether or not they return is shown below:
Teddy Bridgewater: $500,000 is the dead cap.
Graham Glasgow: $1,470,000 is the dead cap.
Dead cap for Halapoulivaati Vaitai is $3,843,195.
Charles Harris: $1,988,334 is the dead cap.
Romeo Okwara: $3,500,000 is the dead cap.
Emmanuel Moseley: $1,000,000 dead cap
Dead cap for C.J. Gardner-Johnson is $2,000,000.
When you total it all up, the dead cap for these seven players in 2024 will be $14,301,529 dollars. However, it should be noted that general manager Brad Holmes anticipated these cap hits and took them into account while creating his summer budget.
