Before Super Bowl LIX, it seemed like the entire league was in search of a formula to beat Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. Tom Brady and Joe Burrow matched Mahomes’s superior quarterback play to lead their teams to playoff wins over Kansas City, but the former is now in the Fox broadcast booth while the latter lost to Mahomes in the playoffs in 2023.
On Sunday, however, the Eagles blew out the Chiefs by showcasing dominance across all position groups. This trounced the ostensibly large gap between the two starting quarterbacks, and Jalen Hurts secured the game’s MVP award while looking like the best signal-caller on the field.
Embrace the Void
The idea of building a complete roster to win a Super Bowl is not new, but the way Eagles GM Howie Roseman built the team could be a catalyst in how NFL teams approach roster building moving forward. Roseman took advantage of a rarely used salary-cap technique by adding void years in players’ contracts. This stretches a player’s cap hit to seasons that go past their current deal, which opens up short-term cap space to sign more immediate talent.
Philadelphia’s roster has 15 players with void years in their contracts, based on data from Spotrac. This includes Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts, who had a $13.56 million cap hit this past season despite his contract’s average annual value being $51 million. His void years start in 2029 with a cap hit worth $38.37 million.
For comparison’s sake, the Chiefs have only one player with void years: DeAndre Hopkins, who they traded for in the middle of the season.
But it wasn’t purely salary-cap magic that pushed Philadelphia to the promised land. The Eagles hit on recent draft picks like Jalen Carter and Cooper DeJean, who are on rookie-scale deals that don’t break the bank.
And while many teams around the NFL deprioritized running backs, they invested in Saquon Barkley (three years, $37.5 million) in the offseason—and he paid dividends with a historic season that earned him $4.5 million worth of incentives.
The Bill Is Coming
“It’s only the beginning till it’s the end, and the end ain’t coming anytime soon,” Hurts said to close out his postgame press conference Sunday.
The Super Bowl MVP was referring to his future, and at 26 years old with four years remaining on his $255 million contract, he has good reason to believe the end is still a long way out.
But the pieces around him may not have the same level of security given how Roseman built the roster. Because void years have pushed cap hits to later years, Philadelphia has the league’s second-largest salary-cap allocation in 2027, and the largest from 2028 to 2030. This means sacrifices may have to be made in the coming years unless Roseman can cover the salary-cap holes once again.
While many of the team’s biggest names will return next season (Hurts, Barkley, A.J. Brown, Jordan Mailata), the Eagles have several key players who will be free agents and just $24.5 million in cap space, 19th in the NFL. These names include linebacker Zack Baun—who was nominated for Defensive Player of the Year after signing a one-year, $3.5 million deal this year—and defensive end Josh Sweat.
The price of drafting well also means young players will expect to get paid when they hit free agency for the first time. The Eagles will either need to find space to pay the likes of DeJean and Carter—as they have with cornerstones like Hurts, Mailata, and DeVonta Smith—or hope they find similar gems in the NFL Draft.
