June 1 Eagles Primer

PHILADELPHIA - June 1 is a big demarcation line on the NFL calendar.

Some organizations are on the cusp of getting immediate salary-cap relief from post-June 1 cut designations by spreading the cap charges over the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

The Eagles did not use any post-June 1 designations early but they do have the pending retirements of two franchise greats: Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox that will be made official very soon. In other words, Philadelphia has carried the contracts of Kelce and Cox to this point to take advantage of the June 1 bookeeping trick.

Understand retirements work similar to releases and had the Eagles not carried Kelce's contract past June 1 this offseason, they would have taken a $25.116 million dead money hit and lost $14.398M of cap space per OvertheCap.com. By carrying Kelce's contract past June 1, those numbers are $8.678M in dead money and a gain of $1.5M in 2024 cap space.

With Cox, the pre-June 1 numbers would have been $14.3M in dead money and losing $8.890M on the cap. Pushing it past June 1 means $4.2M in dead money and a gain of $1.2M on the current cap year.

The credit card comes due for the Eagles in 2025 when the rest of Howie Roseman's voidable years trick will accelerate and result in $16.438M in dead money for Kelce and $10.1M for Cox.

Organizations have attempted to recoup bonus money after unexpected retirements over the years, but that's not the case here. The organization knew this was coming at some point with both Kelce and Cox and set up the contracts to help the team compete in the moment with the understanding there would be a financial penalty for that down the road.

The biggest impact of June 1 on the current Eagles' 90-man roster is the future of veteran cornerback James Bradberry with the first mandatory minicamp of the Nick Sirianni era scheduled for June 4-6.

The odds of Bradberry being with the Eagles on Sept. 6 in Sao Paulo, Brazil against Green Bay were always slim, and the early returns on Isaiah Rodgers have been so positive that slim may have turned to none.

That said, the 30-year-old Bradberry still has value in a cornerback-deficient league despite his down season in 2023 and the Eagles would like something in return for moving on from the former All-Pro.

Philadelphia would also like the added reps for the team's top two draft picks, Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, as well as emerging second-year coverage options Kelee Ringo and Eli Ricks.

The loggerheads are that Bradberry, who has skipped voluntary work to date, has to show up or risks fines that reach nearly $100,000. More so, if Bradberry does does show up he's either taking reps away from those young players or he's a spectator watching practice in a limbo, not a good look for an organization that had deemed this a "mentality offseason."

The Eagles can no longer simply waive the fines and tell Bradberry to stay in Alabama so there might be some sense of urgency to get things done this week.

If the Eagles release Bradberry they will not lose any cap space for the current year, down from a $10.46M cap hit from an outright release before June 1. A trade would result in the Eagles' gaining a nominal $1.2M in cap space, along with the likely Day 3 conditional pick Bradberry could potentiall garner.

As of now Kelce, Cox, and Bradberry all remain part of the top-51 rule on the Eagles' offseason roster with the next three players in line being rookie third-round pick Jalyx Hunt ($1.024M cap hit), receiver Jacob Harris ($997,500), and third-year cornerback Josh Jobe ($988,334).

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