Arizona Cardinals Restructure DL J.J. Watt's Contract

The Arizona Cardinals are making plans for their future. The team restructured the contract of J.J. Watt, adding one void year to his deal in order to better spread out the dead money that will come when he retires.

Cap bookkeeping: the Cardinals have tacked on a year to J.J. Watt's contract, strictly for procedural purposes.

Arizona can now designate Watt as a Post-June 1 move in March, spreading the dead cap hit from his current deal out between 2023-2024 ($2.4M in 2023, $4.8M in 2024).
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 5, 2023

Watt has already declared he intends to retire following this season. He was initially set to leave $7.2 million in dead money on next year's cap for the Cardinals, but the added year will shrink the number down to $2.4 million in 2023 by pushing $4.8 million into 2024.

Watt joined the Cardinals on a two-year, $28 million deal in 2021. He struggled to stay healthy last year, playing only seven games and notching one solitary sack, but he bounced back this year, totalling 10.5 sacks in 15 appearances. He's leaving the game following his best season since 2018.

At the peak of his powers, Watt was among the most dominant players in NFL history. He is the only player to log 20+ sacks in multiple seasons and is one of only three players to win Defensive Player of the Year three times, the others being Lawrence Taylor and Aaron Donald. His abilities extended way beyond pass rushing: as well as logging 20.5 sacks, he totalled a league-record 39 tackles for loss and 16 passes defended in his ludicrous 2012 season. Watt also tallied the next-most tackles for loss ever recorded in a season in 2014 and again in 2015 with 29.