Dead money is nothing new for the 49ers, as they’ve dealt with this with Dee Ford and are currently paying Arik Armstead.
The San Francisco 49ers were ready to wash their hands and move on from Deebo Samuel and his contract. A trade that’s being labeled as a salary dump and a win for both teams in March will be fascinating to watch play out in 2025. Washington could afford to take on Samuel’s $17.55 million salary because they have a quarterback on a rookie contract.
Per Over the Cap, San Francisco will spend more than $31 million in dead money. This comes after restructuring Deebo’s contract ahead of the 2024 regular season. It saved the team over $16 million in cap space at the time. Here’s an explanation from OTC about Samuel’s dead money:
The 49ers will take on a massive amount of dead money with the trade- $31.02 million. This big number came about because the 49ers had to do some salary cap gymnastics the last few years and Samuel was one of the players whose contract was almost all made up of prorated money pushed into future years and void years in the contract. The team will lose about $15.2 million in cap room this year with the trade but they will save $17.55 million in salary and whatever contract headaches that may have come up in the summer if Samuel wanted an extension.
In hindsight, the 49ers shouldn’t have restructured Samuel’s contract.
It helped the Niners in the present, but it added two additional ghost years to Deebo’s contract, creating a void charge of $20.8 million in 2026 and $10.75 million in 2025. Restructuring Deebo meant you would have to pay a team to take his salary instead of getting back a third-round pick for Samuel.
Had the Niners not tinkered with Deebo’s deal, his dead cap charge wouldn’t been $15.1 million. That would have made him far more enticing, as you’d only have to absorb the cap hit in one offseason.
Paying a player large sums of dead money is nothing new for the 49ers. They did so for a few years with Dee Ford. They also still have $15.54 million left with Arik Armstead. This is a team that has consistently jumped through multiple hoops to stay cap-compliant and put themselves in a position to still be aggressive. Deebo’s trade is no different.