The San Francisco 49ers have a lot of difficult decisions to make in the offseason, but they have a no-brainer looming with their best defensive player next month.
As salary cap and contract expert Joel Corry laid out for CBS Sports recently, the 49ers are approaching a key date when it comes to the future of edge rusher Nick Bosa and his contract.
For the Niners and Bosa, March 17 is a very meaningful date.
As Corry explained:
"This is the last day for the 49ers to exercise an option for edge rusher Nick Bosa’s dummy 2029 contract year. A $15.23 million payment is necessary to pick up the option. If the option year is declined, Bosa's 2024 base salary is $16.355 million, which is already fully guaranteed, instead of $1.125 million."
NFL contracts, especially ones such as the five-year, $170 million extension Bosa signed days before the start of the 2023 season, can be very difficult to parse.
Bosa's features a dummy year in 2029. Dummy years are beneficial for the player in enabling them to renegotiate a contract earlier, and allow the team to spread payments out over a longer period of time.
That is precisely what Bosa's dummy year enables the 49ers to do with the $15.23 million, which Bosa is going to receive regardless as it is part of the $88 million he was guaranteed at signing.
If the 49ers decline the option on his dummy year, the money would go on to his base salary and plunge a team already projected to be over $12.3 million over the 2024 salary cap.
Taking up the option allows the 49ers to spread the cost over the course of the next five years of the deal as a prorated option bonus. The bonus would be paid instalments of $3.046 million per year. Over The Cap has already laid out that structure on Bosa's contract page, with the payments included in the 'signing bonus' column.
In other words, instead of giving Bosa an extra $15.23 million in 2024, taking the option essentially allows the 49ers to give the 2022 Defensive Player of the Year an I.O.U. — though thankfully not an I.O.U. of the Dumb and Dumber variety — with a promise to pay him just over $3 million a year.
It should be noted that taking up the option on the dummy year does not extend the life of Bosa's deal. He would still become a free agent after the 2028 season.
But for a team that has a challenge on its hands to get under the 2024 cap, there is little reason to needlessly move further into the red. Whether they do it on March 17 or long before, expect the 49ers to make the easy decision and take up the option to spread the cost.
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