Michael Vick's new contract is going to help the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback as much as a 100 million dollar deal would help anyone else, perhaps more due to his past bankruptcy issues. In an interesting turn of events, though, the contract the Philadelphia Eagles decided to gift Vick with will also help out his former employer.
Vick's new contract with the Eagles is worth about $100 million, with around $40 million of that amount guaranteed, though between 10 and 40 percent of that salary each season will be paid to those he owes until he's able to pay off his roughly $20 million debt, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The entity he owes the most money to is the Falcons, stemming from defaulting on his last contract -- specifically a roster bonus -- due to the whole prison thing. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jeff Schultz reports the amount that Vick still owes the Falcons is $7.5 million.
While that's all well and good, the interesting part comes in here:
Our D. Orlando Ledbetter reported back in April of 2009 that Vick and the Falcons had reached a settlement on the salary cap refund, so that part of the story is not news. But this could be: Via ProFootballTalk.com, the Falcons will seek and could receive salary cap credits, which would come as Vick returns the money.
The NFL hasn't officially ruled if the Falcons will receive credits to the cap -- which would obviously give them benefits over other NFL teams in the signing department -- but maybe not everything regarding Vick's comeback will be bad after all.