Quick Read: What is a Void Year in a Contract?

Information pulled from: sumersports.com and overthecap.com

What is a void year? A void year is a function within the NFL to allow teams to spread out the prorated portion of a player’s salary for up to 5 years. For instance, let’s look at Brock Wright’s contract.

Also remember the situation: when the Lions signed Brock, he was a Restricted Free Agent, and had been given an offer by the San Francisco 49ers. What does this mean? Perhaps the Lions hadn’t planned on paying what the 49ers offered, but he was too critical in his role to allow to walk for the amount of money being asked. So, to soften the blow, void years were tacked on.

As you can see in this cap chart, he had three void years added to his contract, allowing the Lions to be able to hold on to him and spread a little bit of the cap hit out. Specifically you can see 2.7 million absorbed in 2027. If the Lions had not used void years the 2.7 million would have needed to be absorbed by the cap sometime within 2024-2026. It may not seem like a ton of money in the scope of NFL contracts, but it adds up. I am not going to say that I am an expert by any means, but the easy way to think about void years is: they are a way NFL teams pay money to a player later, but sometimes at the expense of future cap space.

I hope this helps anyone who has had this question, I know I wondered about them when the Lions started using them. Let me know what you think in the comments!