No clue, I’ll leave that to the cap experts. I just think he can be productive.
I agree with you, I think that he can be productive, but sadly... they've swapped so much of his past salary for cap space over the years that there is now a HUGE balloon payment due.
In 2018, his actual salary was 6M, 2019 2.75M, 2020 1M, 2021 2M... and he didn't play for these amounts, the Falcons put it all on a cap credit card. If they cut him now... they'd incur a 65M dollar dead cap hit. He is literally, uncuttable. Next year, his cap hit would 'only' be 40M. In 2023, it would be 23M...
But this assumes that they go ahead and pay him salaries of 16M in 2022, and 20M in 2023. This is new money, not the spent money pro-rate that is hanging over the cap.
Just to put this in perspective... if they cut him next year (and incur the 40 million dollar penalty) this will completely wipe out the expected rise in the cap... and they STILL won't have any money to spend.
They can either let him continue to play... on a bad team with no money, or cut him and take a one year bloodbath. BTW... Julio Jones' contract is almost as bad... and for the same reasons. At this point, the Falcons are the walking dead.
Now... if they were to trade him and take the one year bloodbath, Ryan's new team would only inherit his very reasonable salary.