A third pay cut was distributed by the Cincinnati Bengals this offseason when guard Cordell Volson agreed to a reworked one-year contract two weeks ago.

Volson agreed to a pay cut of $1,056,000 million. His base salary dropped from $3,656,000 million to $1,500,000 million, but he gained $500,000 in guaranteed money via a signing bonus. He’s also eligible to earn $600,000 in per game roster bonuses, and $375,000 in incentives.

It’s a one-year, $2,600,000 million contract in practicality, but it will take up $3,139,220 in Cincinnati’s salary cap space. Volson previously had a cap hit of $3,820,220, so the Bengals are saving $681,000 in cap space, but the details of the new deal paint an all-or-nothing picture for the fourth-year offensive lineman.

Cordell Volson’s pay cut explained

There are two reasons why the value of Volson’s contract, $2,600,000 million, doesn’t equal his new cap hit of $3,139,220. Volson’s original rookie contract contained a $656,880 signing bonus that was prorated equally throughout all four years of the deal. This left $164,220 of proration remaining on his deal, and while the club already paid the full original signing bonus, it’s still counted on the cap sheet no matter how the deal changes. That alone accounts for $164,220 in cap space.

Volson’s new incentives account for the remaining $375,000 difference between the new cash value and cap hit, and they are counted on the cap because they are Likely To Be Earned (LTBE) incentives. Not Likely To Be Earned (NLTBE) incentives are not counted on the current year’s cap.

The only incentives the Bengals were permitted to add in Volson’s reworked deal were playing time incentives since he was still under his rookie contract. Whether or not playing time incentives are LTBE or NLTBE depends on how much the player played in the previous season. Volson played 86.6% of Cincinnati’s snaps last year.

With Volson’s new incentives being LTBE, the threshold snaps for him to play this season are either the same or lower compared to last season. And since the Bengals chose to count that cash on the cap instead of saving some space, there’s an argument to be made that Volson is expected to earn that money. The $600,000 in per game roster bonuses only add more motivation for the 26-year old, but since he did appear in all 17 games last year, all $600,000 is considered LTBE.

In short, Cincinnati should end up giving Volson a real shot to start this season and play as many, if not more, snaps than he played in 2024. The former fourth-round pick was benched for two of the Bengals’ final six games last season, but injuries to others allowed him to play in the other four games.

Alternatively, the signing bonus Volson received doesn’t exactly protect him from being cut at the end of the offseason. The Bengals would only eat $664,220 in dead cap and save $2,475,000 by releasing him. It would cost the team more dead cap to release running back Zack Moss or safety Geno Stone, both of whom also accepted pay cuts in the last several weeks.

The whole reason why Cincinnati did this with Volson is because his base salary jumped from $1,100,000 to $3,656,000 thanks to the Proven Performance Escalator (PPE). Volson playing significant snaps during his first three years as a player drafted after the first round qualified him for a $2,656,000 raise in pay, and with how his season ended, the Bengals weren’t comfortably paying him that kind of money.

Volson needs to earn a starting gig back to eventually help make up what he sacrificed, but if he leaves training camp as a reserve, he may have to find work someplace else.