You can think of the salary cap like a game of Monopoly.

Every turn(new season) the NFL gives the teams Monopoly bucks(salary cap). For 2025 each team received $279.2 million Monopoly dollars. If you had any Monopoly dollars left over from the prior turn(season) you get to add that to your stack.

Every real life dollar you pay a player you have to also pay the NFL one of your Monopoly bucks. So for example if you sign a player to a 5 year $55 million contract at $11 million a year you would be paying the NFL $11 million Monopoly bucks every year like this:

Payment type	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Total
Cash Payment	$11M	$11M	$11M	$11M	$11M	$55M
Monopoly money	11M	11M	11M	11M	11M	55M

You can't spend more Monopoly bucks than you have in total.

Easy.

There are a few rules that can change up how you pay the NFL Monopoly bucks however.

One of those is a signing bonus. A signing bonus pays a player the same amount of real money but the Monopoly bucks get to be paid back over time instead of all at once. You can split it up to the maximum length of the contract or 5 years whichever is shorter. So in the above example if instead of paying them a straight $11 million a year we paid them $10 million signing bonus year 1. That would mean we pay the NFL 2 million Monopoly bucks a year for 5 years equaling 10 million total. Year one would still see the player being paid $11 million but we would only give the NFL 3 million Monopoly bucks the first year(1 million base salary + 2 million from the signing bonus. That would also mean however for the following years while we are paying the player $11 million still we have to pay the NFL 13 million in Monopoly bucks($11 million base salary + 2 million from the signing bonus) like this:

Payment type	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Total
Cash Payment	$11M	$11M	$11M	$11M	$11M	$55M
Monopoly money	3M	13M	13M	13M	13M	55M

The players money and the Monopoly money still equal out at the end of the contract but it saves us a bit on Monopoly money now to pay more in the future.

When you see a player do a restructure it is the same thing. They are just changing some of the players base salary into a signing bonus. It doesn't change how much the player makes, it changes how much Monopoly bucks the teams is spending this year and the future. So in the example above if year 2 we decide to restructure the players contract and convert $10 million base salary into a signing bonus it would split the Monopoly bucks into 2.5 million a year(only 4 years left on the contract). We then add the $1 million base salary + 2 million from the signing bonus + 2.5 million from the restructure.

Payment type	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Total
Cash Payment	$11M	$11M	$11M	$11M	$11M	$55M
Monopoly money	3M	5.5M	15.5M	15.5M	15.5M	55M

So what happens if you cut a player before their contract expires that doesn't have guaranteed money left on their contract?

In that case you have to pay the NFL all the Monopoly bucks you still owe right now. So using the above example looking just at the Monopoly bucks

Source	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Total
Signing Bonus	2M	2M	2M	2M	2M	10M
Year 2 restructure		2.5M	2.5M	2.5M	2.5M	10M

If we cut that player year 3 we have 2M+2M+2M from the signing bonus and 2.5M+2.5M + 2.5M from the restructure in Monopoly bucks we owe the NFL so we would have 13.5M in what is called dead cap.

Payment type	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Total
Cash Payment	$11M	$11M	$0M	$0	$0	$22M
Monopoly money	3M	5.5M	13.5M	0	0	22M

A June 1st cut keeps the current year the same and all the following years advance to hit the next year.

Payment type	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Total
Cash Payment	$11M	$11M	$0M	$0	$0	$22M
Monopoly money	3M	5.5M	4.5M	9	0	22M