Cap space from the Darius Slay and James Bradberry cuts will be available by Monday morning.
The Philadelphia Eagles have been busy coming off their Super Bowl victory, reworking their roster and making a flurry of moves to move salary cap space around. Two of those moves involved designated post-June 1st releases of veteran cornerbacks Darius Slay and James Bradberry. With June 1st right around the corner, Philadelphia will finally be able to realize the cap savings provided by these moves.
If you aren’t familiar with the “post-June 1st designation”, we’ve got a detailed breakdown for you here. The short version is that after June 1st, releases are treated differently in terms of the salary cap. Instead of the entire dead money on a contract hitting all at once, the dead money is split between the current year and the following year. This can allow teams to create cap space in the current year by deferring some of the dead money hit to the next year.
Any releases that occur after June 1st are subject to this change, but teams can also choose to designate two releases each season as “post-June 1st”. As you might expect, this designation essentially treats those two releases as if they occurred after June 1st. The catch is that, while the players are released effective immediately and can therefore sign elsewhere, the cap savings doesn’t apply for the team until after June 1st.
The Eagles elected to take full advantage of this mechanism in the 2025 offseason by using both their designations on Slay and Bradberry. But just how much cap space will the Eagles save after June 1st, and how much dead money will be deferred to future years?
How much cap space will the Eagles save after June 1st?
For Darius Slay, an additional $4.32 million in cap space will open up after June 1. For James Bradberry, an additional $2.1 million in cap space will open up after June 1. That’s a total combined savings of $6.42 million for the Eagles. When combined with the Eagles’ existing cap space, that would put Philadelphia at approximately $32.04 million heading into the summer.
That’s plenty of space to make moves, whether that’s free agency signings or trades. Keep in mind that teams rarely spend down the cap all the way, and often want to carry at least some amount of buffer into the regular season. Typically, that number is around $10M, but varies depending on the team and situation.
For the Eagles, who have pushed nearly all of their big money contracts well into the future, it could be prudent to hold onto this money for the time being. Any cap space that isn’t spent prior to the end of the season will “roll over” into the next year, and therefore could be used to help cover some of that future spending in 2026 and beyond. Holding the money in reserve might also be a good idea in case an emergency trade or veteran acquisition becomes necessary.
That reserve money might also be useful to help cover some of the deferred dead money from both contracts. Darius Slay has a whopping $22.75 million in dead money incurred from his release, with $9.44 million slated to be paid in 2025 and another $13.26 million in 2026. James Bradberry has $10.81 million in dead money remaining, with $3.1 million set to be paid this season and another $7.72 million in 2026. That’s a total of nearly $21 million in dead cap that must be paid next season.
This is simply the cost of doing business for the Eagles, who are one of the most aggressive teams in the NFL at deferring salary cap to future years using signing bonuses, option bonuses, and void years to limit the cap hit in the early seasons of the deal. Philadelphia is currently third in the NFL in total dead money, and could climb even higher once these two post-June 1st releases hit the books.
Obviously the strategy has worked extremely well for Philadelphia in recent years, but look no further than another NFC team for an example of how things can go horribly wrong: the New Orleans Saints. As long as the Eagles keep hitting on their free-agent acquisitions, they should be able to keep the train rolling.
