If all he did was convert some of this year's salary to a bonus then he doesn't really affect how much he gets paid each year, only when it gets applied to the cap.
Prior to restructuring Whit was scheduled to make $8M this year with a cap hit of $12.67M and then make $10.25M next year with a cap hit of $12.42M. [
overthecap.com]
If he converts $6M of this year's salary to a bonus he still collects $8M in 2018 - $2M salary and that $6M bonus instead of an $8M salary. But $3M of his cap hit gets transferred from 2018 to 2019: the hit in 2018 would be $9.67M and the hit in 2019 would be $15.24M.
If his plan was to retire after this season he could restructure his contract like this to give the Rams some cap relief in 2018 and not affect how much he makes at all.
It improves Whit's cash flow at the same time in case anyone's wondering what's in it for him: he'd get a $6M payout now and 17 game checks of $118,000 each instead of simply getting 17 game checks of $471,000.
AlbaNY_Ram
