Michael Pittman Jr.’s Future with the Colts Hangs in the Balance—What’s Next Could Change Everything

So you start thinking about the workaround: what if the Colts convert some of his base salary into a signing bonus to lower the incoming cap hit and make him more attractive to other teams? That’s where the math becomes a trap.

If Indianapolis has to restructure Pittman just to make him tradeable, then all they’ve really done is eat dead cap to help another team pay Pittman what he’s actually worth. The Colts would be sacrificing cap flexibility — the entire reason they’re considering moving on in the first place — just to maybe get a mid-round pick back. And at that point, you’re not really “trading Pittman” so much as you’re paying a portion of his contract for someone else to take him.

That’s the part that doesn’t add up. If you have to eat, say, $8–10 million in dead cap just to get his contract down into the $10–15 million range, you’re basically turning Pittman into the exact player the Colts would’ve been happy to pay in the first place — and then still losing him and possibly only getting a middle-round pick in return. It defeats the point.

And from the Colts’ perspective, there’s also a limit to how much you can push into signing bonus without making your own cap sheet worse. If you convert too much and create a big dead cap hit, you’re no longer creating the flexibility you need to sign Daniel Jones, extend Alec Pierce, and keep the roster stable. You’re just shifting the pain forward.