Details of Clay Matthews' contract extension continue to roll in this morning, and Vikings reporter Tom Pelissero has a few pieces of new information that are surprising considering the Green Bay Packers' tendency to avoid backloading their players' contracts into later years.
The first piece of news involves Matthews' signing bonus, which is a rather impressive number:
Clay Matthews contract with #Packers included a $20.5 million signing bonus and a $5M roster bonus due on 3rd day of 2014 league year.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) April 18, 2013
With a signing bonus of that size, it's a pretty good bet that there will be some level of backloading of the cap value of the contract, but Pelissero's second tweet is the really shocking one, and details a source's report of Matthews' cap hits.
Per source, Matthews'cap number in 2013 is only $6.71M before rising as high as $15.2M in 2017. Per-game roster bonus in '14 through '18.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) April 18, 2013
Yikes. That's extremely heavily backloaded. It still is not as high a maximum cap hit as DeMarcus Ware's contract has in 2014 and '15, but it's awfully hefty. This suggests that Aaron Rodgers' contract will have more money allocated to the salary cap in its early years (certainly in 2013).