The Falcons will be devoting a shocking percentage of the team’s salary cap to players who aren’t on the team. Rebuilding teams always have had to deal with dead money as they cut ties with overpaid, high-priced veteran players with long-term contracts.
Every team has to deal with dead money, but the Falcons will deal with it more than any other team this season. The dead cap directly results from a front office’s poor personnel evaluation, where teams give players too much guaranteed money. Simply put, the more dead money a team has, the more difficult it is to build a competitive roster because of the less available cap space.
The Falcons will now deal with the largest dead cap hit in league history. After trading Matt Ryan to the Colts for a third-rounder, Atlanta will incur a $40.525 million dead cap hit, according to Over The Cap.
Ryan’s dead money tops Carson Wentz’s $33.82 million deap cap hit the Eagles absorbed when they traded him to the Colts. Like the 2019 Dolphins with Ryan Tannehill ($18.4 million), the 2020 Jaguars with Nick Foles ($18.8 million), and Lions with Matt Stafford ($19 million), the Falcons will now be forced to rebuild with a severe handicap.
Not only did the Falcons miss out on Deshaun Watson, but they also got pennies in return for Ryan. This new regime has been doing everything wrong thus far. The franchise has never been in a worse spot than they are today.
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