Revised Haason Reddick deal raises questions about waivable fines

The deal came together pretty quickly. Understanding its nuances will likely take more time.

Per a source with knowledge of the revised Haason Reddick contract, if Reddick agrees to honor his deal for the rest of the season, the Jets will waive more than $12 million in fines.

Reddick won’t receive back pay for the eight weeks he missed. The $12 million includes bonus money that he forfeited by missing training camp and eight regular-season games. It also includes fines for missing preseason games, in the amount of one regular-season game check ($791,667) for each of three preseason games missed.

As to the fines for preseason game checks, there’s apparently an unresolved question (which has morphed into a formal grievance) as to whether they can be waived. The Jets are willing to waive them, if the league and the NFL Players Association agree that they can be waived. (The issue, as we currently understand it, is whether the trade that sent Reddick from the Eagles to the Jets exempts the contract from the limited range of deals that carry non-waivable fines.)

As to $2 million in daily training-camp holdout fines, those won’t (and most likely can’t) be waived. However, Reddick can earn the money back via incentives.

It’s unclear who bent the most in order to get this done. However, the one big difference is that, before coach Robert Saleh was fired, owner Woody Johnson wasn’t directly involved in the situation. After the Saleh firing, Woody got very involved. This suggests that the Jets did something that they previously wouldn’t do in order to get the deal done.

Either way, we hope to get a full breakdown of the new deal in order to better understand how this will work. This one might require a full reading of the final contract in order to best comprehend the situation.