Eagles cornerback Rasul Douglas restructured his contract last month, a league source confirmed to NBC Sports Philadelphia.
Douglas agreed to a pay cut for the 2020 season and will now make the league minimum of $825,000 for a player with three credited seasons, according to a source.
NJ.com’s Mike Kaye first reported the restructure last week but the details of the contract were not available.
Before the pay cut, Douglas was set to have a base salary of $2.133 million in 2020 with a salary cap hit of $2,309,572. It seems like the Eagles were not willing to keep him at that price.
His new base salary of $825,000, with a cap hit of $1,001,572, is more manageable.
So this move will save the Eagles around $1 million cap space and will give Douglas a better shot at sticking on the Eagles’ roster for his fourth NFL season, although he’s still not guaranteed a roster spot.
Douglas, who will turn 25 in August, was a third-round pick back in 2017 and has actually started 18 games in three seasons with mixed results. The West Virginia product has five interceptions and 26 pass breakups during his career, to go along with 118 combined tackles.
NFL
With injuries to the starters in front of him during the last three seasons, Douglas became a starter in stretches but hasn’t been able to win one of those jobs outright. Coming into the 2020 season, Darius Slay will start as CB1 and it seems like Avonte Maddox and Sidney Jones will fight for CB2 duties, while Nickell Robey-Coleman and Cre’Von LeBlanc handle nickel responsibilities.
That seemed to leave Douglas out of the equation.
That’s why it wasn’t surprising that the Eagles were reportedly willing to trade Douglas around the the time of the draft. Instead, they kept him through the draft and restructured his contract shortly after. And based on how many injuries the Eagles have had at the cornerback position in recent years, keeping Douglas around might not be a bad idea.
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