Eagles Restructure Jordan Mailata Contract; Inside Cap Impact

It's in those two years when the Philadelphia Eagles figure to need all the salary cap room they can get, so here's what they did with the left tackle Jordan Mailata and why

PHILADELPHIA – Lost in the swirl of Jalen Hurts’ monstrous contract extension that made him the highest-paid player in the NFL, came word that the contract of Jordan Mailata underwent a restructure.

In typical Philadelphia Eagles fashion, they are ahead of the curve on this one, just as they were on their now-franchise quarterback, Jalen Hurts.

The restructuring won’t impact the Eagles’ salary cap much in 2023, but in 2024, when DeVonta Smith and Landon Dickerson will come looking for extensions - and each deserves one based on their stellar play since being drafted in 2021 -Mailata’s salary-cap charge goes way down.

The Eagles could, and will if they need to, pick up the fifth-year option on Smith’s contract. That’s an option that only comes for first-round picks, so it doesn’t exist for Dickerson.

Still, they are going to cost money and a lot of it.

After earning a four-year, $64 million extension just days before the start of the 2021 regular season, Mailata’s cap charge for 2024 was expected to be $21.09M. That will go down now to $13.44M.

That’s pretty significant since, in addition to finding money for Smith and Dickerson, will also be Year 2 of A.J. Brown’s extension which comes with a salary-cap charge of $12.42M.

More importantly, 2024 is the first year of Jalen Hurts’ five-year contract extension, which carries a cap hit of $13.56M.

Hurts’ salary-cap charges will continue to rise, but, for a deal as mega as the one he agreed to on April 17, it’s not as bad as it could have been.

Hurts’ cap hits going forward, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter:

2023: $6.15M, which is nearly two million more than it would have been had the extension not been done, but the Eagles added bonus money to it to spread out the hit of his five-year, $255M extension as much as possible.

2024: $13.56M

2025: $21.77M

2026: $31.77M

After that, Hurts' cap charge rises a ridiculous amount, but it won’t ever get to that point, because the Eagles will try to restructure.

As for Mailata, he is signed through 2025 and, still just 27, should continue to make a big impact on the left side of the line after being drafted in the seventh round of 2018 as a project right off the rugby playing fields of Australia.

His recent restructure lowers his cap hit this season by a modest amount, from $7.67M to $7.47M.

After 2024, when his big salary-cap charge drops significantly, it will again in 2025 when it decreases from $22.09M to $14.31M.

Ed Kracz covers the Philadelphia Eagles for SI's EaglesToday.

Please follow him and our Eagles coverage on Twitter at @kracze.

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