Denver Broncos: Predicting a Possible Justin Simmons Contract

Guarantee structure

This will be the trickiest part of the contract to predict but based on the Mahomes deal, and what’s already outlined, we can make a fair guess.  A few factors that go into guaranteed money are signing bonus, guaranteed salary, and roster bonuses and the dates in which they are picked up (this was the guarantee mechanism in Mahomes deal that was so key).

When looking at Simmons deal, we’ve already stated that the guarantees will likely be around $46 million guaranteed, and $36 million fully guaranteed at signing.  The best guess is to how that is structured would be to assume a combination of the traditional up-front signing bonus/guaranteed base salaries, and the guarantee mechanism for the final year in the form of a roster bonus.

Below is the table from the previous slide, expanded upon to show the best guess on the structure of the guarantees:

To break this down a bit more, Simmons would receive full guarantees of $36 million paid within the first two years in the form of the traditional signing bonus plus guaranteed salary.  The last $10 million would be in the form of a roster bonus that would need to be picked up a year prior.

Essentially, after the 2020 season, the Broncos would need to decide if they want to pick up the option for 2022.  It’s a near guarantee that they would under this structure, considering they would owe him the $15 million guaranteed base salary in 2021.

In the instance that Simmons would suffer a career-ending injury, they could decline the option and cut Simmons before the 2021 season if they believe it is better to pay $15 million for someone not on the team then $25 million over two years for someone who isn’t worth it.

Again, there is a very minimal chance under this structure the Broncos wouldn’t pick this up, bringing the total guaranteed value to $47 million when adding in the 2022 $1 million salary.