Arizona Cardinals have a couple of options to create cap space without making cuts

With the Arizona Cardinals signing of J.J. Watt they used a small chunk of their 2021 cap space.

The Cardinals have a couple of options to free up some more cap space that doesn’t include making cuts to the roster.

Looking at the Cardinals roster there are three moves they can make to free up some cap space.

1. Extend (Restructure) Chandler Jones - The Cardinals could take the current contract they have Jones on, extend him a year but make it “voidable” and convert about $10-12 million in salary in bonus and spread that bonus out over the next two seasons. That frees up about $6 million in cap space.
2. Restructure Justin Pugh - Pugh is owed about $11.1 million in salary cap hit this year. If they converted some of his salary like above, they could reduce that to about $7.8 million according to Spotrac. That is $3.3 million in cap space.
3. Slash Robert Alford’s salary - Alford is on the books for $9 million. He has yet to play a down for the Cardinals and it seems unlikely that he would command much in compensation if he is released (which saves the Cardinals $7.5 million). If Alford is ammenable to a reduction to that $1.5 million salary with incentives that he could make back if he plays, the Cardinals have him for cheap and potentially have a cornerback on the roster.

With those three moves, they create about $17 million in cap space without creating any more holes on the roster.

What do you think?