We now know the structure of Jeremy Reaves’ contract extension with the Commanders

The details are in

It’s been two weeks since the public announcement that safety and special teams ace Jeremy Reaves signed a one-year contract extension with the Commanders.

Over the Cap has now published the details of Reaves’ extension.

While there are no surprises, it does look like a good deal for Reaves, who now has more guaranteed money overall and better job security for the ‘24 season than he did before the extension.

Jeremy Reaves original 2-year contract and extension details

In the image above, you can see the terms of the contract extension signed by the Commanders and Reaves prior to last season; it was a 2-year deal worth $6m.

Following the end of the ‘24 season and before this month’s extension, Reaves — as you can see in the blue circles — had no guaranteed money left, and the team could have saved $2.6m in ‘24 cap space by cutting him.

Under the terms of the new extension, Reaves now has nearly $2.3m in guarantees, split almost evenly between the two seasons (‘25 & ‘26). This means that the Commanders would lose cap space if they were to release Reaves this offseason.

By doing a little math, we can see that Reaves received a total signing bonus of $1.705m. It looks like $915,000 of that was conversion of 2025 base salary to signing bonus (you can see the base salary fell from $2.085m to $1.17m), with $915K of new money added to make up the total signing bonus. The effect of this is to give about 44% of Reaves’ expected ‘25 cash flow to him prior to the start of the season — a nice cash flow bump for the newlywed.

The $1.125m guarantee for the ‘26 season doesn’t guarantee Reaves a roster spot, but it means that he can count on at least that much hitting his bank account next year no matter how things go this season.

Assuming that Reaves makes the team in 2025 (which seems a very good bet) the Commanders would have paid him $2.645m in cash this year under his original contract. With the extension, his cash flows jump by about $700K to $3.35m for 2025.

To summarize, then, with the extension, Jeremy Reaves gets the benefit of increased overall cash in 2025, with a lot of it hitting his account prior to the start of the season. He also has over $1m in guaranteed salary for 2026, his age 30 season.

The Commanders, in return, can count on one of their on-field and locker room leaders for two more seasons — a great return on investment for the 2018 undrafted free agent and the three coaching staffs and two front offices that have believed in him.