Carl Lawson got big money to sign with the Jets in 2021 but he has agreed to lose a big chunk of that money in order to stay with the team.
Lawson was scheduled to make $15 million in 2023 but that has been cut to $9 million, with $8 million guaranteed, The Post confirmed.
Lawson can earn $3 million more if he reaches certain incentives.
Previously, none of the $15 million for this season was guaranteed on the three-year, $45 million contract he signed with the Jets in 2021 after four seasons with the Bengals.
The 27-year old defensive end started all 17 games in 2022, with 33 tackles, 7.5 sacks, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.
He had nine tackles for loss and 24 quarterback hits.
Lawson missed the entire 2021 season after suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon in a mid-August joint practice with the Packers.
This salary reduction saves the Jets $12.7 million on the 2023 salary cap.
Lawson was set to count $15.7 million on the cap and that was not tenable for general manager Joe Douglas.
The Jets do not need increased cap space to get a multi-year extension done with defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, who is seeking a new contract to make him the second highest-paid defensive tackle in the NFL behind only Aaron Donald.
Williams is set to count $9.5 million on this year’s cap and any new deal will likely lower that cap hit for 2023.
The Jets will need to do something with quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ contract, which was reworked by the Packers before they traded him to the Jets.
He is currently scheduled to count only $1.2 million on this year’s cap and is scheduled to make $107 million in 2024.
“We knew at the end of the trade that Aaron and Green Bay needed to work some things out. We didn’t know the exact ramifications,” Douglas said recently on Pro Football Talk’s “NFL on NBC.”
“It was just important to us that the cap number wasn’t going to go higher than it was at the time that we agreed to it. We didn’t know that it was actually going to go down to the minimum, so when they re-did the deal, we saw the new number, knew that we saw that it was low for this year. We’re still working on restructuring aspects of the deal as we speak, but we feel we’re in a really good place.”