Seahawks restructure Geno Smith’s contract, lower his cap hit

The Seahawks have opened up some cap space ahead of free agency.

A week after guaranteeing Geno Smith’s salary for the 2024 season, the Seattle Seahawks have restructured the starting quarterback’s contract.

Smith, who was due a $9.6 million roster bonus by March 18, will have that money converted into a signing bonus. ESPN’s Field Yates reports that half of that money will result in created cap space for this offseason.

Here’s what Seahawks GM John Schneider had to say about the decision on Seattle Sports 710.

“It’s a roster bonus that’s converted to a signing bonus. So the roster bonus just for cap purposes, you can take a roster bonus and there’s language in the contract where we can convert it to a signing bonus and then it’s spread out over the duration of the contract. That creates more capital for us,” Schneider said. ” … (Seahawks vice president of football administration) Matt Thomas does a really nice job of working that in as an option for us throughout the process so that at any given time if we feel the need, we can move that into signing bonus and create more capital.”

This lowers Smith’s cap hit from $31.4 million to $26.2 million for the 2024 season, but raises his 2025 cap hit to $38.5 million.

The moment that Smith’s salary was guaranteed basically quelled any notion that the Seahawks would release him. However, questions still remain about whether or not Seattle will look to trade Smith.

If the Seahawks trade Smith before June 1, the dead cap hit would be a whopping $27 million instead of $17.4 million before the restructure. Don’t even ask about cap savings because they don’t exist in this scenario. If they trade him after June 1—no, you can’t have a trade in March with a post-June 1 designation—would mean $13.5 million dead money/$12.9 million cap space saved, according to OverTheCap.com. I doubt a post-June 1 trade happens.

A hypothetical Smith trade would mean that whichever team acquires him would only be on the hook for his $12.7 million salary. Presumably in this scenario the Seahawks would get substantial draft capital to make up for the big dead cap hit they would take.

The big thing is that the Seahawks don’t have a March 18 decision to make anymore regarding Geno’s roster bonus and any possible trade. Based on the latest numbers, however, the dynamic of a potential trade has changed.