Analyzing Devin McCourty's Contract Extension
The details of Devin McCourty's long-term extension have finally been released, and it looks like the veteran safety took on a team-friendly contract yet again.
Thanks to the void years on the backend of McCourty's reported five-year, $53 million deal, that allows his cap hit to be spread out amongst those five years, which makes his cap hit in 2020 just $5.4 million. McCourty's cap hit last season was $13.435 million.
McCourty got a little extra cash in hand this year thanks to his signing bonus ($14 million) as compared to last year's ($9.5 million), but that's because his base salary in 2020 ($2.25 million) will be much lower than it was in 2019 ($9 million).
The long-tenured Patriot finished the 2019 season with his highest interception total since 2012 (5) and was ranked as PFF's 8th-best safety in the NFL.
Now the question remains as to what the Patriots will do with that added cap space. While predicting Bill Belichick's next move is never something anyone can really do with confidence, it might be safe to think that the money they saved in the McCourty deal was to leave room for two corresponding moves.
The first move was the expensive franchise tag of Joe Thuney, which put New England back roughly $14.8 million. The second move is signing draft picks, which will not be cheap this year with a potential twelve draft picks to sign and an increase in minimum salaries from the new CBA deal.
The Patriots' current cap space sits at $7,142,584, according to Boston Sports Journal's Miguel Benzan. That number includes Thuney's franchise number the McCourty deal. If McCourty took the $11.5 million this year instead of next year, New England would currently have just about $1 million dollars in cap space. The Patriots would be unable to sign draft picks with that little money and would need to adjust more contracts to fit rookies on the team.
While this backloaded contract for McCourty could give them flexibility to go and acquire someone through free agency, the smarter move might be to just sit until the draft and start seriously looking at the team's long-term future.
