The Patriots and Tom Brady have agreed to restructure his deal giving him the opportunity to increase his 2018 cash intake by $5 million via incentives.
Let's take a look at the restructuring and the impact it has on the Patriots' salary cap.
While there has not been a report that the $5 million in incentives will be classified NLTBE (Not Likely to Be Earned), I expect the incentives to be classified that way. Background — for a statistic to be considered NLTBE in 2019, Brady could not have accomplished the feat in 2018. For example, Brady did not score a rushing touchdown in 2018 so scoring a rushing touchdown in 2019 would be considered NLTBE. Since Brady threw 32 touchdown passes in 2017, throwing 33 in 2018 would be considered NLTBE.
What incentives could be considered NLTBE for last year's MVP?
- Points scored by the team: 459
- Touchdowns scored by the team: 49
- Total offense (net yards): 6,308
- Average net yards gained per passing play: 8.0
- Passing completion percentage: 66.4 percent
- Wins: 14
- Super Bowl victory
- Passer rating (224 attempts): 102.9
- Completion percentage (224 attempts): 66.3
- Interception percent (224 attempts): 1.3 percent
- Total yards: 4,578
- Yards per pass (224 attempts): 8.0
- Touchdown passes: 33
- Total rushing yards: 29
- Rushing Touchdowns: 1
- $14 million salary
- $7 million signing bonus proration
- $1 million in 46-man active roster bonuses ($62,500 per game).
-
- Pay for players 52 and 53, which should amount to $960,000. Right now, all 32 teams are operating under the Top 51 rule, where only the salaries of the players with the 51 highest cap numbers count against the cap.
- Pay for the 10-man practice squad — $7,600 a week for 17 weeks to 10 players equals $1,292,000. We’ll round up to $2,000,000 since Patriots typically pay some practice squad players more than the minimum and the Patriots have in the past cut practice squad players after 4 p.m. on Tuesday when the player has earned that week’s salary.
- Have a cushion for the $3 million in NLTBE 46-man active roster bonuses that could be earned by eighteen players.
- Have a cushion to extend players during the regular season — usually between $1 million and $4 million.
- They also have $1.075 million in reserve Shea McClellin applies for injury protection.
- Have a cushion to replace injured players during the preseason and regular season. This total is usually between $4 million and $6 million. Under the new CBA, the Patriots have placed the following amounts of players on Injured Reserve, PUP (Physically Unable to Perform) or NFI (Non-Football Injury):
2011: 12
2012: 11
2013: 13
2014: 10
2015: 20
2016: 6
2017: 17
