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Bengals take away starter's pay raise he earned fair and square, but there is a way he can earn back some cash

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By John Sheeran | Last updated May 22, 2025 6:14 PM ET

Cordell Volson starting most of the last three seasons for the Cincinnati Bengals earned him a nice pay raise this offseason. The NFL's Proven Performance Escalator (PPE) rewards players drafted outside of the first round for outplaying their draft status by giving them raised salaries in the fourth and final year of their rookie contracts.

Volson, having played at least 55% of Cincinnati's offensive snaps in all of his first three seasons, earned the Level Two PPE this offseason and saw his base salary boosted from $1,100,000 to $3,656,000.

The problem for the Bengals is Volson was benched last year and needs to earn back his starting gig at left guard, or even win the right guard job. The former fourth-round pick going back to competing for playing time like he was three years ago as a rookie had the Bengals thinking how to appropriately compensate the 26-year old, and that came at a cost to him.

Cordell Volson's pay cut confirmed per report

The transactions page for Bengals.com listed the club had "re-negotiated the contract" of Volson on May 14. Financial details and any report of the news had not come to light outside of the team's official website until ESPN's Ben Baby confirmed the transaction.

Per Baby, the restructured deal reduces his base salary but provides him with "new guaranteed money and the opportunity to earn more cash."

Additional details on Bengals guard Cordell Volson’s re-structured deal. Per source, his base salary of $3.7m is reduced.

But that cut comes with new guaranteed money for 2025 and the opportunity to earn more cash, depending on how the battle at guard shakes out.
— Ben Baby (@Ben_Baby) May 22, 2025

The new guaranteed money has likely already been paid to Volson in the form of a signing bonus. This was the case for both Zack Moss and Geno Stone, whom also accepted reduced base salaries earlier this offseason. Moss and Stone recuperated some of that lost cash via a fresh signing bonus also helps protect them from being released as it adds possible dead money to the team's salary cap sheet.

Any added cash Volson could later earn are almost surely attached to playing time incentives. Salary cap expert Andre Perrotta explains the only incentives allowed to be included in a rookie contract involved snap counts.

Some additonal info here from Ben regarding Cordell Volson's paycut.

Volson, via the proven perfomance escalator, was scheduled to earn a non-guaranteed base salary of $3,656,000 in 2025.

Though not reported by Ben here, I'd expect his base salary has been reduced to below… https://t.co/7P7uEKlQLG
— Andre Perrotta (@andreperrotta13) May 22, 2025

Cincinnati likely approached this in one of two ways. Volson played 86.6% of the offense's snaps last season, and averaged 95.4% during his first three seasons. His incentive mark to hit is either around 87% or 96%. Most incentives are based on the previous season, so the safe bet is he needs to play at least 87% of the team's snaps this season to earn some of his money back.

The Bengals re-signed Cody Ford, signed Lucas Patrick in free agency, and drafted Dylan Fairchild as their tweaks to the guard position this offseason. Volson is squarely in the mix with all three to start this year, and now that he's taking up a smaller portion of the salary cap pie, he's more likely to stay on as a reserve if he doesn't win back a starting gig in August.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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