Many people have asked me what a voidable year is, the purpose of it, & if there’s a restriction of how many voidable years can be added, so I’m here to answer that question.
A voidable year is basically a dummy year, which is used for salary cap purposes, and the purpose being the be able to spread a signing bonus, or option bonus over a maximum of 5-years.
Now there are a few different ways teams will use a void year, they can be when restructuring a contract, like the 49ers have done, with the likes of Dee Ford, Jimmie Ward, Arik Armstead, & George Kittle, where they add on a voidable year, with the main purpose to get the maximum salary cap savings, instead of what the minimum salary cap savings would be.
Now, teams will use this when signing players to a regular contract, it can be a 1-year deal, or multi-year deal, as the 49ers just recently started doing this in 2020 when they signed Arik Armstead to a 5-year, $85 million deal, which included a voidable year in 2025, and they did it this offseason with the likes of Charvarius Ward, Oren Burks, and most recently Deebo Samuel, and again the main, & sole purpose being to spread their signing bonuses, and/or option bonuses over the maximum of 5-years.
Now, there really aren’t any known restrictions on how many void years can be added, but usually it’s just enough void years to be able to prorate the signing bonus, and/or option bonus over the maximum 5-years.
I’ve also been asked what teams use it the most, and it seems to be a big thing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as they used it on pretty much all their big contracts after their Super Bowl run, but not every team will use it, and this brings up answer to what the pros, and cons are to using a void year.
Well, the pros to using a void year is to create the maximum amount of salary cap savings when a team restructures a contract, or to get a lower salary cap figure for when a team signs a player.
The cons, well the main con is that it leaves dead money in the year the contract voids, so for example, the 49ers will have $6.395 million in dead money in 2023 from the Jimmie Ward restructure they did last year, plus the fact that Ward originally got a 3-year deal, with a 4th-year, which was a void year, again used for cap purposes.
I hope this will help people to better understand what exactly a voidable year is, and why teams use it, the pros, cons, and just the overall effect of them.
As always, thank you for reading, for more salary cap information & tidbits, follow me on Twitter @49erscap.
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