Details on Derrick Johnson contract far more favorable for Raiders than originally reported

When a player is signed by a team, their agent puts out numbers that are often the absolute max the deal can be and not what the initial numbers actually are. It’s for that reason we can’t take those number at face value and apply them to the cap or otherwise.

For Derrick Johnson, not only were initial reports of his salary much higher than his actual number, they were much higher than even his max number after incentives, according to new reports on his figures.

Initial reports had his contract at one year, $3 million. New details on his contract put his max number at $2.25 million with a base salary of $1.5 million according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero.

That means Johnson’s cap hit is exactly half of originally reported, with just $500K guaranteed. Much easier to take a chance on a 35-year-old linebacker with numbers like that.