Lane Johnson announced his retirement from the NFL yesterday which seemed to blindside many people around the NFL. In season decisions like this are very rare and now there are a number of questions about how this impacts the Eagles salary cap moving forward.
While this move comes four games into what looks like it will be a disappointing season for the Eagles, the overall impact of the decision should not be too far reaching for the Eagles. The Eagles had reworked a contract with Johnson in March of 2025 where they paid him an extra $8 million for the 2025 and 2026 seasons and give Johnson the chance to return in 2027 if he wanted to do so. His original contract was set to end in 2027 and the new one really just had 2027 as a paper year with the likelihood that they were moving on anyway.
The Eagles have generally pushed the cap charges as much as they can in their contracts and this one is no different, having used yearly option bonuses. In terms of prorated bonus money that is 100 earned the Eagles will need to account for $14.659 million this year and $25.53 million from future years. These are easily manageable numbers.
The question is how do the Eagles account for an option that should have been exercised this year for $21.7 million. By retiring Johnson is in breach of contract and likely will forfeit most of the bonus. Thus far about half of the bonus was likely paid to Johnson and the other half was to be paid in December. The team could opt to let him keep the first half of the bonus, maybe a portion of the bonus for games played or take back most of the bonus entirely. If Johnson does keep the bonus in full that would be added to the charges bringing the number for this year to $18.99 million and next year to $42.89 million which is a pretty big number.
The Eagles do have options with the timing as to when they take all of these cap charges. While Johnson has announced his retirement there is no reason the Eagles have to process that now. If he is keeping the bonus the team could simply keep him on the roster this year, have a 52 man roster, and then retire him on June 2 of 2027. That would allow the team to keep his cap charges this year intact, take $16.6 million in dead money in 2027, and then take $26.276 million in 2028. This would more or less play out the same as his original contract where he was going to be designated a post June 1 cut in 2027.
I guess there could also be the possibility of placing him on the NFI list or the left squad list. I am not exactly sure how that would work since he did announce that he is done, but Johnson did specifically mention needing to focus on his own mental health which I think could give the Eagles an out to place him on such a reserve list. That would certainly allow them to take back most of his 2026 option salary while also keeping their post June 1 strategy intact for 2027.
If that option is completely eliminated the Eagles would keep his cap charge as is this year, take $12.274 million in 2027 and then $13.2 million in 2028. The team would also receive a $4.34 million cap credit in 2027 for the 2026 option that counted on the 2026 cap but when unearned. Whether they took it all at once or split it across 27 and 28 the net impact would be no different than if Johnson was on the roster next year anyway so again it really does not impact the Eagles cap.
The ultimate number will likely be somewhere in between the two scenarios, but in no way are the numbers going to be so high that the team can’t deal with it.
The Eagles cap position next year is middle of the NFL and a bit worse than that for 2028. While they do not have the flexibility some other teams have to create more and more cap room, they are also not in a position of the roof caving in on them.
The one thing that has set the Eagles apart from some other teams that aggressively restructure contracts is that the Eagles have been proactive with the strategies, meaning they take everyone on the roster and constantly minimize the cap charges every year. This spreads the risk around the entire veteran portion of the roster such that if one player performs poorly odds are his contract will be offset by a player exceeding expectations. Yearly carryover is maximized in this fashion and the use of the Post June 1 releases is baked into contracts. For the most part these are all staggered so the cap does not his a catastrophic breaking point.
This is different than teams who are forced into massive restructures for players that may not have a long term future with a club simply because they need to function within the salary cap for a given year. While the risk is there if a large number of players all have their play fall off a cliff, the odds are strongly against that.
In any case the retirement of Johnson, while abrupt, should not materially change the Eagles salary cap situation moving forward, good or bad. It should basically remain status quo. I will update the numbers once we get some concrete information on Johnson’s reserve status with the team moving forward.