Lane Johnson Helps Eagles Create Cap Space

Have no fear, Howie Roseman is here.

As many fans were worrying about the Eagles getting under the salary cap when the new league year starts on Wednesday afternoon, the Eagles have restructured Lane Johnson's deal to save a ton of space, league sources confirmed to NBC Sports Philadelphia.

As ESPN's Field Yates first reported, the Eagles created $7.5 million in cap space by slightly re-working Johnson's deal. The Eagles still have some work to do, but according to OverTheCap, they needed to trim just under $9.9 million to be cap compliant. So they have about $2.3 million left to trim.

Johnson's cap hit was supposed to be $12.48 million, but it's now just $4.98 million, according to ESPN. He'll collect a signing bonus of just over $4 million in the process.

Basically, Johnson still gets all his money after an All-Pro season, but it comes to him in a different way. Basically, the way this works is that teams will give a player his money in a bonus instead of salary so that the cap hit is spread out over several years, alleviating a hit in the current year. It obviously didn't bother Johnson at all and it gives the Eagles much more flexibility.

This is just the latest example of Roseman's mastery of the NFL salary cap. The Eagles have been good at figuring out these puzzles for some time now. It's really a waste of time to worry about Philadelphia being in cap hell.