How the GOAT’s retirement impacts Bucs’ salary cap

Tom Brady is retiring (for real, this time), leaving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with a massive hole at the game’s most important position, as they head into a daunting offseason.

Not only will they have to replace the GOAT at quarterback, but the Bucs are also projected to be $55 million over the salary cap for 2023, and that’s without re-signing any of their 23 unrestricted free agents.

Brady is one of them, but thanks to previous contract restructures and void years, his retirement will still have a massive impact on the Bucs’ cap situation, in both good and bad ways.

The GOAT will carry a massive dead cap hit for Tampa Bay, but the fact that he’s retiring instead of signing with another team will allow the Bucs to push some of that impact to 2024:

The automatic void date on Brady’s deal will also need to be moved back from its current March 15th deadline.
This maneuver allows the $35.104M of dead cap left on Brady’s contract to split up into $10.776M for 2023, & $24.32M for 2024.

2/2

— Spotrac (@spotrac) February 1, 2023

So, Brady’s retirement can save them more than $24 million in dead cap space this year, but they’ll still be on the hook for that amount next year if they split it up this way.

Either way, the Bucs will still have some tough decisions to make as they look to get cap compliant this offseason, but Brady’s retirement gives them the opportunity to balance that impact over two years instead of having to eat it all right now.