How Eddie Jackson's Huge Payday Affects The Salary Cap

The Chicago Bears launched into their 2020 offseason with no lack of energy. While Matt Nagy got a fast start on overhauling his coaching staff, GM Ryan Pace already knocked out the first of his biggest in-house contract issues. This involved star safety Eddie Jackson. Following a second-straight Pro Bowl, the Bears made it their mission to ensure the 27-year old was locked up long-term. An agreement was reached on a four-year extension worth $54.8 million.

This will make him the highest-paid safety in football. Some may not like hearing that but Jackson's play made that inevitable. He's one of the best safeties in the game and almost certainly would've gotten that money somewhere else. Pace made sure to stick by his plan to always reward his own players first. A wise policy.

The only question left is how Jackson's monster payday affects the Bears' 2020 salary cap. They didn't have a lot of space even after tweaking Kyle Fuller's deal, putting somewhere around $16 million. One would imagine this delivers a big hit, right? Not necessarily. Since it's an extension and not just a new deal, the 2020 year on Jackson's contract still holds the base salary of his rookie deal. That means his cap hit will remain low even with incoming bonuses.

Eddie Jackson helped the Bears by doing deal this way

A good example of this is Tennessee Titans safety Kevin Byard. He signed an extension with them a year ago as well. Initially, he wasn't supposed to make more than $1.3 million total for 2019. However, the contract extension slightly raised his base salary and added some prorated bonus to where it was just over $4 million. Still quite manageable for the Titans. This is likely how the Bears will approach things as well. His cap hit might go up somewhat, but nothing of great significance. At least for this year.

Fuller's contract tweak actually helps in that regard, eating most if not all of whatever it will cost. At worst the Bears would be back where they were before that adjustment was made. All in all, this deal was the right thing to do and should not affect them in their hopes of trying to be active on the open market come March. Jackson deserves props for getting it done this way. It gets him his money but leaves his team with plenty of wiggle room to continue adding pieces to help in 2020.