The contractual future of the defensive line
May 28, 2021
by Steve Thomas
It’s no secret around the NFL that Washington has assembled what appears to be one of the top defensive lines in the NFL. Not only that, but it’s stocked full of young talent who could conceivably be together for years and in the best case scenario become the core of a long-term contender. Washington has four first round picks as the starting group and talent in the backup ranks who could start for many other teams.
With Washington’s transition to a base 4 – 3 scheme last season, the starters were Montez Sweat and Chase Young at the two defensive end positions and Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne at the defensive tackle positions. Matthew Ioannidis is the other starter-level player, and he returns from injury this year. Tim Settle could likely be a starter-quality player on at least some other teams, but in DC he’s probably the primary interior backup. The remaining players in this position group are young and unestablished, and while they may pan out, it’s tough to predict at this point. Folks like 2020 draft pick James Smith-Williams, or this year’s rookies William Bradley-King and Shaka Toney may or may not be worthy of second contracts.
Is it possible that Washington can keep all six of their principal linemen? Possible, yes; likely, no. The biggest problem is that it’s going to cost a ton of money to keep all of these players. Moreso, will the team even want to keep all of them? Will all of them want to stay? There just isn’t enough playing time to go around for 6 players who each deserve to be a starter. Let’s take a look at some specifics in order to make a prediction about what the team could do with its defensive line group going forward.
Before I get started, I’d first like to apologize, because this column started out as a quick, short idea about the defensive line and in typical Steve Thomas fashion slowly morphed into the gigantosaurus that is before you. Also, all of my financial approximations here are conservative and are based on the assumption that the Redskins Washington isn’t willing to blow up the cap for the sake of one position group. If either of those are wrong, then this analysis could change substantially.
First, Jon Allen is going to play the 2021 season on his fifth year option, and rumors have circulated that the team wants to re-sign him. His cap hit is $10.051M in 2021. Allen has played and started 52 games, but has missed 12 due to injury, with 11 coming in his rookie year. He’s made a total of 202 tackles and 17 sacks, but hasn’t been selected to a Pro Bowl or an All Pro team. Allen is a solid player with ability and leadership characteristics. He’s worthy of a long-term deal, but I don’t believe that Allen will be a top of the market player. However valuable he may be to the team, his resume just isn’t at the level of the top defensive tackles in the league. Allen only has this coming season to improve his value. He’s the most critical piece for the team to figure out because his contract expires first, but at this point, Washington’s only option other than a long term deal is to use the franchise tag on him going forward, and we all know how that usually works out.
Payne is in the final year of his base rookie contract and has a 2021 cap hit of just under $4.6M. However, the team exercised its a fifth year option for 2022 in late April, so he will play next season on a one year deal at a slightly higher cap hit than that of Allen’s cap hit this year. Payne has only missed one game in three years and has 166 career tackles and 10 sacks, which is a slightly higher level of statistical production per year than that of Allen. Payne was named to the Pro Football Writers’ Association All-Rookie team, but he otherwise hasn’t earned any honors. Payne is another player who deserves a long-term contract but can probably be had for something less than a top of the market deal. This could obviously change in two years depending on his performance going forward.
Ioannidis is the next most critical piece of the puzzle. He was a revelation as a sixth round pick in 2016, and ended being far more capable than his original draft status would have suggested. He spent the early part of his rookie year on the practice squad but for the most part has been a starter since 2017. Washington signed him to a three year, $21.75M contract extension in 2019 that expires at the end of the 2022 season. This is a critical year for Ioannidis in terms of his market value. Many thought he was Washington’s best defensive lineman in 2019 and was named as a fourth alternate to the 2020 Pro Bowl. He missed most of last season due to a torn biceps, and then he also caught a certain artificially engineered virus that originated in a viral research lab owned by the Chinese government. The team has until the start of 2023 free agency to make a decision about Ioannidis.
Sweat is entering his third year of his rookie deal, and Washington holds a fifth year option for 2023, so he’s under team control for three more seasons. Like Allen and Payne, Sweat has not received any honors thusfar in his career. He’s been injury proof in his two seasons, and has 16 sacks and 95 tackles, including 9 sacks last season. Sweat’s play and production took a step up last season, no doubt due in part to the presence of Young on the other side of the line. Sweat has been good, but not great, but it’s possible that his performance continues to improve as time goes on. It’s therefore a little tough to see where Sweat is going to fall in the hierarchy of NFL pass rushers, but for the sake of the argument here, I’m going to assume that he’ll end up deserving a big but not enormous contract extension.
Young’s career started off on the right foot last year. He finished his rookie year with 7.5 sacks and 44 tackles, and was named the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year. The recent history of players who won that award is good, so it’s a decent indication that Young may continue to live up to his draft status and become an NFL-elite level player. His rookie contract runs through 2023, and Washington holds a fifth year option for the 2024 season. The Collective Bargaining Agreement provides that teams can offer contract extensions after a player’s third year, so theoretically Washington could begin to talk about an extension with Young after the 2022 season. Alot can obviously happen in the next two years, but of all of these players, Young is the one who appears at this early stage of his career to be on track for a massive long term second contract. However, for the sake of financial sanity, I’m going to assume for this discussion that Washington does not offer him a huge extension after year three.
Finally, Tim Settle, the fifth round pick from Virginia Tech, is about to become a free agent, with his rookie deal expiring at the end of this coming season. He’s played in 7 games, but has only started 2 and has 41 tackles and 7 sacks. Washington will need to decide whether to make a push to bring him back to Washington after the season.
Here’s a summary of Washington’s current annual contractual obligations to these players:
2021:
Players Cap Hit
Allen $10.051M
Payne $ 4.587M
Sweat $ 3.174M
Young $ 7.855M
Ioannidis $ 6.9M
Settle $ 0.987M
Total: $33.554M
Cap %: 16.8%
2022:
Ioannidis $ 8.25M
Payne $ 8.529M[1]
Sweat $ 3.7M
Young $ 9.4M
2023:
Sweat $10M+ (opt year)
Young $11M
Total: $21M+
2024:
Young $10M+ (opt year)
Total: $10M+
The contract value of the fifth year option is the average of the 3rd to 25th-highest salaries at each position group, but there are also escalators for playing time and Pro Bowl selections. For this reason, it is impossible to predict the values for Sweat and Young for 2023 and 2024. As a baseline, edge rusher Marcus Davenport with the Saints has a fifth year option value for 2022 of $9.55M, and Bradley Chubb with the Broncos, who has been to a Pro Bowl, has a fifth year option value of $12.7M in 2022. Therefore, the figures for 2023 and 2024 will be very large, well over $10M, even if neither Sweat nor Young is selected to a Pro Bowl. The odds are, though, barring disaster, that Young will be selected for at least one, and it isn’t out of the question for Sweat, either.
The NFL’s base salary cap in 2021 is $182.5M, and after rollover space and cap adjustments, Washington’s total cap figure this year is $199.7M. According to ESPN and others, just this week, the NFL and the NFL player’s union have reached agreement that the maximum to which the 2022 salary cap can rise is $208.2M. This does not mean that the actual cap figure will be $208.2M, because the cap is calculated based on revenues. We simply know that it will not be higher than that number. However, since that maximum would be the highest annual salary cap increase ever, let’s assume that the 2022 number gets somewhat close to that that figure and optimistically go with an even $205M. Then, let’s conservatively assume for the sake of the argument that the cap will go up $10M per year in 2023 and 2024. I will also assume that Washington will have roughly the same rollover space and cap adjustments as they did in 2021. This could be wildly inaccurate because of the increased projected television revenue and differences in annual rollover money and cap adjustments, but if we start there for the sake of this hypothetical, then the team’s approximate current annual cap usage percentages for the defensive line group in each of the coming seasons is as follows:
2021: 19.34% (including all players in the group)
2022: 13.4%
2023: 9.0% +
2024: 4.1% +
If, as a reasonable guess, Washington wants to keep the cap usage percentage for this group at or below about 20%, then the follow are approximations of the maximum amount of cap space the team would want to use on the defensive line group in each of the coming seasons:
2022: $44M
2023: $46M
2024: $48M
Given those estimates, the following is the approximate current free cap space for the defensive line in each of the coming years:
2022: $14.121M
2023: $25M
2024: $38M
If Washington keeps a total of 8 defensive linemen, that leaves room for 3 roughly minimum salary / backup players. Let’s give those three hypothetical players $4M in cap space in 2022, $5M in 2023, and $6M in 2024. That realistically leaves about $10M for Allen and Settle in 2022, $20M for Allen, Settle, Payne, and Ioannidis in 2023, and $32M for Allen, Payne, Ioannidis, and Sweat in 2023.
The 2022 challenge of re-signing both Allen and Settle is easily doable. The team could give Allen a five year deal with a minimum base salary and large signing bonus in year one to achieve a low first year cap hit. For example, Landon Collins had a cap hit of just $3.825M in 2019, which was the first year of his deal with Washington, despite an $84M contract with a $15M signing bonus, $26M guaranteed at signing and $44.5M in total guarantees. For the sake of what’s left of brevity, I’m not going to hazard a guess here at specific numbers for a contract for Allen, but given available information, I’ll just say that both players can be on the roster in 2022 for less than $10M. Settle probably isn’t worth more than a one or two year deal, so let’s give him a $2M cap hit for these purposes. Washington can easily give Allen a fair contract and keep his year 1 cap hit under $8M.
In 2023, Washington would need to add Payne and Ioannidis to the calculation in the approximately $20M in free space. Allen’s cap hit in year two of his hypothetical new deal would have to go up substantially, the theory being that while he would have received his big money in year 1 via a signing bonus, that’s not the case in year 2. Therefore, I’m going to assume Allen’s cap hit would be as much or more than $12M, with Settle again at around $2M. That conservatively leaves somewhere in the neighborhood of $6M for Payne and Ioannidis. Washington could use the same tactic for Payne as I proposed for Allen, with Payne getting a five year deal with a large signing bonus and minimum base salary for 2023, for a total cap hit of something in the neighborhood of $4M or so. Washington would be looking at around $12M – $13M for Allen, $4M for Payne, and $2M for Settle, which is a total of between $18M – $19M without accounting for Ioannidis. If the team was willing to sacrifice Settle and add around $2M to their cap usage for the defensive line, they could perhaps work out a deal for Ioannidis that occupied around $4M in cap space. That’s doable if (1) Washington was willing to give Ioannidis a longer contract, or (2) Ioannidis’ performance doesn’t merit a second large deal. Either way, I’d say it’s reasonable to assume that one or both of Settle and Ioannidis are at risk in 2023.
Finally, in my hypothetical Washington would have approximately $32M for Allen, Payne, Ioannidis, and Sweat in 2024. Allen would be in his third season of his new deal and would most likely have a large cap hit, so let’s assign him $15M, which I view as a pretty low number given the circumstances. Payne would be in year two of a new deal, so his cap hit would also need to rise substantially, so let’s give him around $12M. That leaves just a few million left for both Sweat and Ioannidis. Washington could pull the same long deal / low base salary trick on Sweat’s contract for 2024, so they can probably have all of Allen, Sweat, Young, and one of either Payne or Ioannidis under contract in 2024, but expecting Ioannidis and Settle to also remain for 2024 is unlikely unless Washington really doubles down on defensive line cap usage.
Settle may be a goner as early as next season unless he makes himself more valuable to the team on a “pro rata” basis, meaning that his performance per cap hit dollar is much higher than that of both Payne and Ioannidis. Allen is probably the safest of this group simply because his contract situation must be resolved first. All of the problems I identified here go away if the team was for some reason inclined to let Allen walk. The macro-level point here, though, is that Washington can probably manage to end up with 4 of these 6 players on the roster on a long-term basis, but not 5 or 6 unless the team over-obligates itself in cap usage.
[1] Calculated and published by Over The Cap at https://overthecap.com/fifth-year-option-projections/.