Zach Brown’s one-year contract with the Eagles pays him $1.4 million but with a chance to make another million in realistically obtainable incentives.
The Eagles signed Brown to a one-year contract last Friday. He was released by the Redskins March 13.
Brown’s deal, according to a league source familiar with the details, includes a $400,000 signing bonus and $1 million base salary, and those are the only guaranteed components of the contract.
It also includes a $100,000 workout bonus and $1 million in playing-time and performance-based incentives that could raise the total value up to $2.5 million if he meets every one.
Brown’s 2019 cap figure is $2.5 million. Since that includes the full value of the $1 million in incentives, that means the plateaus are ones he reached in 2018. Only incentives considered “likely-to-be-earned” count against a player’s cap figure, and only plateaus that the player reached in the previous year are considered likely to be earned.
Brown, a 6-foot-1, 250-pound inside linebacker, has played in 94 games with the Titans, Bills and Redskins, with 74 starts.
With Jordan Hicks gone and the Eagles thin at linebacker, Brown projects to fill an important role with the Eagles this year.
NFL
Brown’s contract is far smaller than the one he signed with the Redskins on March 16, 2018. That was a three-year deal that included $10 million in guaranteed money and a $4.5 million signing bonus and was worth $21 million.
But Brown only played one year of that deal and counts $3 million in dead money against the Redskins’ 2019 salary cap. That’s the pro-rated portion — two-thirds — of Brown’s signing bonus.
So Brown is playing for the Eagles at a cap figure significantly less than his cap figure for a division rival that he doesn’t play for.
That’s HowieBall.
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