At least one member of the four Chargers players thought to be potential cap casualties is on the way out.
Mike Williams has been released, but edge-rusher Khalil Mack will remain in Los Angeles in 2024. The latter has agreed to restructure his contract, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports.
The former Defensive Player of the Year is due $23.5M in 2024, but his cap hit was slated to sit at $38.5M. The Bolts needed to make a few major cost-shedding moves to achieve cap compliance today, and the Williams release freed up $20M in funds. Reworking the Mack contract will provide further breathing room.
This marks the second straight year the Chargers have restructured Mack’s contract. The 2023 adjustment created the whopping 2024 cap number, and with Mack’s Bears-constructed contract in its final year, it will be interesting to see what the Chargers do here.
After Mack resurfaced with a career-best 17 sacks last season, Jim Harbaugh will keep him in the fold.
With Tom Telesco at the helm, the Chargers traded second- and sixth-round picks for Mack in March 2022. After a quiet debut, the former Raiders and Bears All-Pro posted his first double-digit sack season since 2018.
The 33-year-old pass-rusher has also proven durable for a Chargers team generally anything but, playing 17 games in each of his two Los Angeles seasons.
The Chargers discussed Williams, Mack, Keenan Allen and Joey Bosa in trades recently, and they pushed the Williams matter to the deadline.
The team has moved under the salary cap via these two moves, but this became one of the more notable cap crunches in recent NFL history due to the team entering the compliance deadline day more than $25M over the cap.
With a new leader in charge, Mack, Bosa and Allen may not be full-on locks to stay with the Chargers — as trades could come about.
For now, however, the Bolts have checked off two of these four contracts. Allen and Bosa, however, are tied to cap hits north of $34M. Like Mack, Allen is going into the final year of a contract. Bosa has two years remaining.
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