Sorry, but I still do not understand the contract. When you say they do not have to pay the $53M in 2030 because it is void, does that mean they will already paid it in bonuses? And this is just a cap hit? So they have cap relief for four seasons but then suffer this cap hit for one season in the future?
There's quite a few players and teams who now add void years on to a contract, to spread out the signing bonuses and option bonuses to lower the immediate cap hit, but ultimately the player doesn't play that extra year nor do they actually get that money listed in the void year, or years.
The one caveat though is, having void years also makes it so a player has dead cap hits if they are sent to another team or even if they play out the contract, so in a way it's like a way to circumvent the cap space currently but deal with some of the repercussions down the road. The way the Eagles structured it, they have a dead money hit now BUT it's a lot less than if they had traded AJ Brown before June 1, hence all the waiting.
I could be wrong but the Pats do have the 53M dead money charge in 2030, that's true. But they can also easily restructure Brown's deal or extend him again soon to negate that and work around it. That's how teams like the Drew Brees-Saints and others who have been in "cap jail" over the years and end the season with "negative" cap space end up creating more easily, with the use of signing bonuses and extensions with more void years tacked on.
Ultimately I could see the Pats extending Brown's deal and ultimately that "void charge" could become spread out again in future years as part of the extension as well. It's a loophole teams exploit and I guess it's allowed in the NFL rules. It's partially why you see teams like the Rams, Chiefs, etc. give out megadeals but be fine, because it's structured in a way where the cap hit isn't that high right now (think of Ohtani and the Dodgers too, all that deferred money they were allowed to give him so it doesn't all count on their payroll right now - Ohtani signed a 10/700M deal but only 46M gets reported as luxury tax because of the deferrals, it's not a 70M/AAV)
A famous example was also Taysom Hill of the Saints. In 2021 he signed what seemed like an idiotic 4/140M deal that the Saints offered, but it was hardly that. The deal had 4 voidable years, and in reality he didn't get close to that. I forgot exactly what he got, but the gist of it was, it allowed the Saints to free up 8M in cap space immediately once he signed it.
