Then how did Tom Brady restructure to try to keep welker?
My oversimplification of the cap issue as I understand it.
Players get 2 types of paydays: Bonuses and salaries.
Bonuses are paid up front, but their cap hit is spread over the life of the contract. So if you got a $10 million bonus on a 4 year deal, it would be a $2.5 million cap hit each year.
Salaries become cap hits in the years they are earned. So if you get $5 million in year 1 and $3 million in year 2 and $1 million in year three, those are the cap hits for those years.
The problem with Fitz's contract is that it is heavy on the bonuses. When a contract is terminated early, or if a player is traded, the remaining cap hit from the bonus is accelerated into the current year. In the example above, if we were in year 2 of the deal, that would mean that the outstanding $5.0 million in bonus money would be accelerated into the current year for cap purposes (for a $7.5 million hit).
Salaries are not guaranteed, so the unpaid salaries at the time of a trade do not impact the cap.
So what that all means is that we paid Fitz a ton of bonus money that has yet to still hit the cap. He could restructure his outstanding salary money, but not the bonus money already in his bank account.
Or something like that. Brady could probably take his cut because they weren't talking about bonus money at the time.
