What the Seahawks did to Dre'Mont Jones' contract on Thursday

The Seahawks restructured Dre'Mont Jones and added void years to get breathing room under the salary cap: Seaside Joe 1930

The keyword for Dre’Mont Jones in his second offseason with the Seattle Seahawks is “moving”. As in, first they moved him from an interior presence to an edge rusher, and second they’ve moved around some of the money that they owe Jones in order to have cap space before and during the 2024 season.

Here are the details via Jason Fitzgerald of OvertheCap.com:

The Seahawks restructured the contract of defensive lineman Dre’Mont Jones converting $9.875 million of Jones’ 2024 salary into a signing bonus to create $7.4 million in cap room for the season, lowering his salary cap charge to $10.77 million. Jones’ 2025 salary cap number increased by $2.468 million to $25.645 million and two void years were added to the contract. The two void years currently hold $4.9 million in salary cap charges.

The move was necessitated by the Seahawks current salary cap position which saw the team with a league low amount of cap room, about $1.1 million, prior to the restructure. This should give Seattle the breathing room to now function the rest of the summer and into the regular season.

A “restructure” is only when the team takes the player’s BASE SALARY (like what you make at work per year, if you’re on salary) and converts it into a signing bonus. It is not a negotiation. Is it not a pay cut. It is not a new contract. Just imagine that you make $80,000 per year and your company comes to you and says, “Hey Gordonch (which is your name in this scenario), we’re going to pay you $75,000 right now and you will only receive small weekly paychecks of $100 for the rest of the year.”

You (Gordonch) will get the sweet, sweet cash, but you better save it because you’re not making anything else for the entire rest of the year.

I am taking extra special care to define a restructure this time because over the years I constantly see these moves defined as “pay cuts” or “a player doing right by the team!” when it is NOT that. It’s nothing close to that. Dre’Mont Jones isn’t “helping” the team and the Seahawks are not “screwing over” Dre’Mont Jones.

There’s no human emotion involved with this transaction, it’s merely an accounting move that was necessary in order for Seattle to have the cap space to make moves between now and the end of the year. That’s it: It could have been done by A.I., which is a popular buzzword of the moment!

Here is Jones’ revised contract terms and I hope that this is readable on your device, it may not be on a mobile but should be on a computer:

The gist of the revision is this: The Seahawks carry a Jones cap hit that is almost $10 million LESS in 2024 than they previously did but $2.5 million MORE in 2025. They also now owe a $5 million cap hit in 2026 that wasn’t there yesterday; it’s not ideal for 2026, but $5 million in NFL contracts is similar to the value of $500 to most people.

I’m not saying it’s nothing—if the Seahawks had $5 million extra before now, then they might not have restructured Jones today—but these are obstacles that all 32 teams deal with so Seattle isn’t at a disadvantage.

What it means for Dre’Mont Jones in 2025

The bigger news here is what the restructure means for Jones in 2025. I’ve already gone on record by saying that I think Jones has a mountain to climb this season in order to guarantee his stay next year—even if he has 10+ sacks, the $11.5 million in cap savings is enticing for a team that is projected to rank in the bottom-5 of salary cap room in 2025—and the restructure changes almost nothing. Jones has a $25.6 million cap hit in 2025 and yet he’s played more like an $8 million player so far, not only in Seattle, but also over the course of his Broncos career.

To put it another way: The Seahawks would be LUCKY if Dre’Mont Jones played the edge position as well as Jadeveon Clowney did for Mike Macdonald in Baltimore last year. Yet the Ravens balked at the idea of re-signing Clowney for only $10 million per season. So even if Jones plays like Clowney, isn’t Gordonch Mike kind of going to feel the same?

So not only do I still expect Jones to have an uphill battle for next year, I also think he’s a midseason trade candidate this year. Restructuring his deal brings his salary down to $1.125 million, meaning that he’s affordable to literally every single team in the league now.

Untul we see Jones bend and move and run like few edge rushers in the NFL can do, there’s no reason for the Seahawks to pay him almost $26 million in 2025. That would be the sixth-highest cap hit for all edge rushers in the league, even though he’s one of the only “edge rushers” who has never even been an edge rusher!

The restructure helps the Seahawks now and it also kind of helps them in the future.

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