As of a week ago, Bucs $6 million under the salary cap Because the 2025 league year began on Wednesday.
But over the past week, they have made several moves that cost money against their salary caps. They signed an outside free agent Haason Reddick, Riley Dixon, Kindle Wilder, Charlie Heck, Anthony Walker. They also re-signed internal free agents Kyle Trask, Anthony Nelson, Greg Gaines and Ben Bredeson.
All of these moves require pay cap space. It makes sense for a team to restructure an existing contract to create that room. And now, according to Fox Sports’ Greg Auman, they’re doing it with the most likely candidates.
Bucs restructured the Tackle Tristan WIRF contract to create cap space. The base salary of $26 million will be converted to $1.17 million, and is a bonus (rated over five years), creating a new cap space of $19.86 million that covers the wave of the team’s first signature.
– Greg Orman (@gregauman) March 14, 2025
BUCS RT TRISTAN WIRFS – Photo: Cliff Welch/Pr
That one reconstruction should be paid for most of the moves mentioned above. The Tristan Wirfs was the best option for this move for several reasons.
He’s away from a great season and points to his play that justifies a higher cap hit in the future. He also just finished the final year of his rookie contract and is now in the first year of a five-year extension. Therefore, this restructuring only pushes the accounting of this amount throughout the real life of the transaction. As long as WIRFS revives the entire contract, there is no dead money associated with this move.
And at $26 million, his base salary was the second-largest on a team that only quarterback Baker Mayfield. So it provided second-large cap savings. Other candidates for this rebuild include Mayfield, Mike Evans, Vita Vie and Antoine Winfield Jr.
With the exception of Mayfield, the team would not have been able to open up much space with all these moves. Also, in the Maximum Reconstruction Format, all four of these contracts would have meant creating invalid years and dead caps on the line. WIRFS presented the perfect blend of space and transaction length.
How much cap space do you need?
Bucs Olb Haason Reddick – Photo by Cliff Welch/Pr
So far, there are no details for all signatures. But here is what we know. Reddick transactions are one year and $14 million. With $2,000,000 tied to each game roster, you don’t have to calculate all $14 million.
Reddick only played 10 games last year, so he’s unlikely to make 7/17 of $2 million, or $823,529, and is exempt from this year’s CAP calculation. Therefore, the 2025 Reddick cap number is $13,176,471.
Bredeson’s contract is $22 million over three years. The Bucs are paying him a $2 million base salary and a $55 million roster bonus this year. Roster bonuses are proportional over five years, so only $1,100,000 will apply to this year’s salary cap. This will mark Bredeson’s $31 million cap hit this year.
Nelson counts $5.5 million against the cap this year as part of his two-year $10 million agreement. Greg Gaines’ cap hits on a one-year deal are fully accounted for at $3.5 million.
Bucs QB Kyle Trask – Photo: USA Today
Bucs utilizes several special provisions in the NFL-NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement regarding Trask and Vildor. Vildor was signed under the Veteran Payroll Rewards Rules. Tampa Bay pays him $1,337,500, but he has to make up $1,197,500 at his salary cap, as if there are only two seasons when he actually has six.
Similarly, Trask will be paid $2,787,000 this year, but Bucs will only be charged $1,337,500 at the salary cap as his transaction is running as a four-year player qualification agreement.
Dixon’s deals are two years and $6 million. We don’t have the details of the structure yet, but let’s assume that the Bucs want to explain even the $3 million cap hits a fairly simple one. The terms of the Heck and Walkers trade have not yet been announced, but it’s safe to say that both are under $2 million in one year.
The total of these salary cap fees is somewhere in the neighborhood between $30 million and $31 million. The reconstruction of WIRFS covers about two-thirds of that total. Again, the team had about $6 million in initial space. Where did the rest come from?
Chris Godwin extensions
Bucs WR Chris Godwin – Photo by Cliff Welch/Pr
Before the new league year began last Wednesday, the Bucs agreed with Chris Godwin on a three-year contract extension.
After pushing back the invalidation of previous contracts until the start of the new league year, the deal meant it was again proportional in the 2025, 2026 and 2027 seasons, with a dead salary cap of $18,852,000 that the team is due to undertake. This pushed $11,318,000 from 2025 books. If the new deal is configured the same as the previous one, I think it would think, the new cap fee for 2025 is about $5,500,000, saving the team a total of $5,818,000 salary cap to make up for the new addition difference.
We expect the total Godwin fee for 2025 to be $13,034,000. He also hit a cap hit of $33,659,000 in 2026, $29,909,000 in 2027, and a cap fee of $8,250,000 in 2028.
As for WIRF, this move changes his cap number for each remaining year of his deal. The 2025 number will drop from $31,362,582 to $11,498,582. His cap will be a hit from 2026 to 2029.
2026 – $36,328, 582
2027 – $36,328,586
2028 – $36,566,000
2029 – $32,991,000
