Why would a beason restructure be risky. We wont save much by just cutting. Restructuring him to an incentive deal this season and cut/trade him next year is better
Often when people say "restructure" they mean "renegotiate". Restructuring doesn't usually free up any total money from the entire contract. It just pushes it into the future, often with a little MORE money (in the future) for the trouble of restructuring to help the team now.
Renegotiating is when a team and player both know he won't get as much money from another team so the team threatens for either the player to take a paycut or get cut. Often this leads to a player getting cut, they test the waters in FA, then re-signs with the team at a reduced rate.
Beason has made it sound like he's not open to renegotiating to give money back. So a restructure sounds like the only option to straight cutting him, and in all likelihood a restructure would hamstring us even worse in the future. I love the guy, he's my favorite defensive Panther of all time, but I honestly think he'll be cut or traded because that's what makes the most sense. Traded so we can get some sort of compensation (even though the salary cap implications will be the same as it will be if we cut him), but if we can't trade him then cutting him is one of the ways to help our cap in the long run.
