With the free agency season set to open, the Washington Redskins and Chris Samuels finally agreed to a contract extension. While the Redskins don't appear poised to be the jet setters in 2005 as in previous off-seasons, Samuels' new contract does open the door for Washington to be more active if they so choose. Rumors of fiscal restraint at Redskin Park couldn't possibly be true could they?
So how does the contract break down? Summarily, the contract is worth about $46.5 million over seven years. His signing bonus was a Redskins record $15.75 million and there are other bonuses throughout as well. The signing bonus pro rates to $2.25 million per year, which is always a very important number in salary cap respects.
There are two things that fans want to know when it comes down to contract negotiations like this; the cap hit for each year of the new contract, and the subsequent effect on the cap for the upcoming season.
Firstly, the cap hit for each year. In order to determine the cap hit for this year, you have to first understand that the new contract has no bearing on the previous contract's signing bonus pro ration amounts. Just because you extend the contract doesn't mean that you get to now take that existing bonus money owed and extend THAT bonus over the new contract term. The only bonus money that will be pro-rated over the new contract is the new $15.75 million signing bonus. So Samuels had a cap hit in 2005 and 2006 of $2.932 million for money that will still be accounted for in the cap hit.
His 2005 cap hit will contain his annual 2005 salary (likely to be 5-7 year veteran league minimum $540k) plus his 2005 new signing bonus cap hit (aforementioned $2.25 M) plus the money owed from the previous contract (aforementioned $2.932M). Add those three numbers up and you come to about $5.722 million. Obviously this year's exact salary and other possible unknown roster bonuses in the new and old contracts may have bearing on these numbers.
Samuels was slated to have a cap hit of $9.643 million in 2005, so the contract extension means savings of roughly $3.921 million. Obviously, these figures are only approximate and all unofficial, as not all contract details were known at time of press. They do at least serve as a decent guess as to what Samuels' contract extension means to the Redskins cap status, which would be between $3.5 and $4 million savings.
When all of the contract details are released, THN will post a subsequent article on the cap hits over the term of the contract.
All numbers aside, Chris is now a Redskin for life and his willingness to extend his contract allow the Redskins to dictate their course of action as opposed to being hand-cuffed. All good news for Redskin fans.
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