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Turns out recently acquired wide receiver Mike Wallace is more expensive than initially reported.
According to a copy of his contract obtained by NBC Sports Philadelphia, Wallace's salary cap figure on the one-year contract he signed with the Eagles last week is actually $4 million, or $1.5 million higher than was widely reported when the Eagles signed him as an unrestricted free agent.
It includes just under $2 million in guaranteed money.
It's also only $1 million less than the 2018 cap figure of Torrey Smith, who the Eagles traded to the Panthers in a cost-cutting move. Smith did not have a very good regular season in his one year with the Eagles but caught 13 passes for 157 yards and a touchdown in the postseason.
Wallace, like Smith a former Raven, is two years older than Smith and has been generally much more productive.
His 2018 deal includes only a $915,000 base salary, but it also includes more than $3 million in various bonuses that will count against the Eagles' adjusted cap of just under $176 million.
$1 million is in the form of what is called "other amounts treated as signing bonus," or OATSB in NFL salary cap parlance.
NFL
And $2.085 million is in the form of what are considered "likely to be earned incentive bonuses," or LTBE, which are incentives that count against a team's cap because they reflect performance plateaus that the player reached one year earlier.
If a player does not trigger some or all of the incentives, his team regains some or all of its cap money but not until after the season.
For now, the $1 million in OATSB and that $2.085 million both count against the cap, and the combined three components — $915,000 in base, $1 million in OATSB and $2.085 in LTBE bonuses — combine to give Wallace a $4 million cap figure.
That is actually highest on the roster among wide receivers, a bit higher than Alshon Jeffery's cap figure in 2018 ($3.975M) and about a $1 million more than Nelson Agholor's ($2.98M)
Nonetheless, the Eagles still rank in the bottom 10 in the NFL in cap allocations devoted to wide receivers.
According to Spotrac, the Eagles are devoting $14,667,302 in 2018 cap allocations to receivers, 24th-most in the NFL.
Since entering the NFL in 2009, Wallace ranks ninth in the NFL with 8,072 receiving yards and seventh with 57 touchdown catches.