NaVorro Bowman restructures part of contract

San Francisco 49ers inside linebacker NaVorro Bowman has restructured his contract. Field Yates and Aaron Wilson were the first to report on this. Bowman reduced his 2014 base salary from $4 million to the league minimum of $730,000. According to Wilson, the $3.27 million difference has been converted to a signing bonus. This is a good move for both sides. Bowman gets up front money, while the 49ers get some immediate cap relief. 

In converting the base to signing bonus, it reduces his 2014 cap figure from $7.05 million to $4.434 million. The signing bonus will prorate at $654,000 per year through the end of the deal in 2018. It clears out a sizable amount of room this year without adding too much space in any future years. You can only do so much pushing forward of money, but this strikes me as a solid enough change.

The 49ers will get $6.6 million in cap space on June 1 when Carlos Rogers contract officially clears the books. While I don't think we'll see any extensions immediately happening, it does create more space for potential contract extensions for Colin Kaepernick, Michael Crabtree and/or Mike Iupati. I still think Kap's extension will be the first to go through, but we'll wait and see how it plays out.

Fooch's Update - Here is how NaVorro Bowman's remaining cap numbers look. He reduced his 2014 number, but his remaining four years each increase by $654,000 because of the prorated signing bonus:

2014 cap: $4,434,000
2015 cap: $8,404,000
2016 cap: $9,554,000
2017 cap: $8,954,000
2018 cap: $10,104,000