Late last week, the Green Bay Packers and tight end Robert Tonyan agreed to a new contract. Tonyan was a restricted free agent whom the team gave a second-round tender, worth $3.384 million for the 2021 season.
And although Tonyan will indeed get that amount of money this season, it will not be according to the typical tender structure. If he had simply signed the tender, he would be working on a simple one-year deal for the tender amount, all consisting of non-guaranteed base salary.
Instead, Tonyan is doing the Packers a favor — at least where the 2021 salary cap is concerned — and taking a big chunk of that as a signing bonus to spread out the cap money.