Cap relief with Aaron Hernandez? Don't expect it any time soon

As the Patriots currently stand with just about $4 million in cap space, it has to stick in their craw that their 2014 books have a $7.5 million cap charge for Aaron Hernandez. That's right, the third highest cap charge on the team belongs to an alleged murderer currently being held in solitary confinement in a North Dartmouth prison.

Now, that doesn't mean Hernandez (or more accurately, Hernandez's legal team) will get paid $7.5 million by the Patriots this year, as all but $3.25 million of that cap charge has already been paid to Hernandez up front.

When Hernandez signed his seven year, $40 million deal in 2012, he received a guaranteed $12.5 million signing bonus. Signing bonuses are typically received up front at the time of the contract, but the money is split into separate cap charges over the length of the deal to lower cap hits. For example, this common practice is how Darrelle Revis will make $12 million this year while only costing $7 million against the cap. In the case of Hernandez, his $12.5 million bonus was split into cap charges of $2.55 million the first two years and $2.5 million the next three.

Via Spotrac

Hernandez was cut on June 26 last year, the same day he was led out of his North Attleboro home in handcuffs. Because the transaction occurred after June 1st, it fell under the June 1 provision, something we discussed earlier this offseason with Danny Amendola. Under the June 1 rules, Hernandez had a cap charge of $2.55 million last year (that year's proration of his signing bonus), with the remaining $7.5 million of his appropriately named dead money getting charged to the 2014 books.

However, the Patriots included language in the deal to split the actual payment of the signing bonus into three separate bills: $6 million at the time of signing, $3.25 million last March and $3.25 million this March. Hence, the Patriots have already paid Hernandez $9.25 million of his signing bonus, with that last $3.25 million still technically owed.

In other words, $4.25 million of Hernandez's $7.5 million cap charge has already been paid and cannot be recouped. However, the Patriots are obviously fighting to not pay the alleged murderer a cent of the $3.25 million still owed to him. Bill Belichick was asked about the grievance process yesterday at the league meetings, and his long-winded answer revealed just how little power the team has in this situation.

“We went through a similar thing with the [Jonathan] Fanene situation a year ago, and there are rules in place as to how those situations get handled from a timing standpoint. It’s not random. There is a schedule and how things get reconciled. Whatever the process is, that’s what it is. It’s not a random process. It’s reviewed, it’s scheduled, and if there is a credit, there’s a process for how it’s credited. If it isn’t, there is a process in how it’s accounted for. So we’ll comply with the league’s salary-cap rules, just like we always do and whatever they are, they are. And whatever the results are, they are.”

Fanene, a defensive lineman with the Bengals, was signed as a free agent in 2012 and given a $3.85 million signing bonus. However, the Patriots cut him in training camp after discovering he had a degenerative knee condition, and promptly filed a grievance seeking to recoup the full bonus due to the player's failure to disclose his injury. The NFLPA filed a counter-grievance seeking to have Patriots team doctor Thomas Gill relieved of his duties (in hindsight, maybe not a bad thing), but that was dropped when the two sides reached an agreement allowing Fanene to keep the bonus money already paid to him ($2.5 million) while giving the Patriots a cap credit for the $1.85 million still owed. Had the two sides been unable to reach an agreement, the dispute would have been settled by formal arbitration.

There isn't a chance in hell of the Patriots and Hernandez working out a compromise to settle this grievance, especially because Hernandez will need every cent he can get his hands on to pay his rapidly mounting legal fees. The Fanene situation took over a year to settle, and that was without the ongoing legal complications of the Hernandez case. It's quite possible that the Patriots will eventually get a $3.25 million cap credit at the end of the Hernandez grievance, but expecting that to come in time to open up cap room this year appears to be wishful thinking.