Bears restructure Jaylon Johnson’s contract, free up cap space

The Chicago Bears are creating some extra salary cap space as they prepare to kick off the 2025 regular season, restructuring the contract of star cornerback Jaylon Johnson.

The move is expected to create around $8 million is additional cap space, per multiple reports:

The details on the restructure aren’t exactly clear, but typically, these types of moves involve converting a large portion of the player’s base salary into a bonus. That bonus is paid out immediately to the player, but the team is able to reduce the player’s current cap number while spreading out the cost of the bonus over multiple years in the future.

This makes sense for a player like Johnson, who is in his prime at just 26 years old, and just signed a huge four-year contract extension last offseason. Since Johnson is clearly a foundational player on the Bears’ current roster, they’re willing to bet that he’ll be around for the next few years while they absorb the extra cost of that prorated bonus without worrying that he’s regress or be a player they’d want to move on from before the proration is complete.

In the meantime, the Bears will get a little more breathing room under the cap, allowing them to potentially add more veteran help as they look to compete in what could be the toughest division in the NFL this season. Prior to the move, Chicago was operating with just over $1.5 million in cap space, per Over the Cap.

Also according to Over the Cap, Johnson’s cap number for 2025 was set to be $21 million. If this move is saving them around $8 million in cap space, that would obviously reduce his current cap number to the $13 million range.