The Raiders, who are paying for bad contracts of the past with salary-cap problems of the present, managed to create a significant chunk of space with the stroke of a pen. Without costing the player a dime.
The new deal signed by safety Tyvon Branch drops his cap number for 2013 from $10.9 million to $3.872 million, per a source with knowledge of the deal.
Branch receives in 2013 a guaranteed payment of $8.785 million and a base salary of $715,000, which equals the $6 million base salary and $3.5 million roster bonus Branch was due to receive under the prior deal.
In 2014, the cap number increases to $7.157 million, with a $3 million base salary and a $1 million roster bonus. $1.5 million of the base salary is fully guaranteed. (Under the prior deal, the cap number would have been $5.4 million; the 2014 compensation remains the same.)
Ditto for 2015; the base salary is still $5.5 million with a $1 million roster bonus. But the cap number climbs from $7.9 million under the old deal to $8.257 million under the new one.
The contract also includes $3.514 million in dead money that will hit the cap in 2016, after the final two years void. Which is part of the price a team has to pay when taking current cap dollars and pushing them into the future.