49ers Rumors: Arik Armstead Restructures Contract; SF Has NFL-High $41.5M in Cap Room

Arik Armstead has joined the group of players for the San Francisco 49ers who restructured their contracts before the start of the regular season.

Per ESPN's Field Yates, the 49ers restructured Armstead's deal to free up $11.8 million and give the team an NFL-high $41.5 million in cap space.

General manager John Lynch and executive vice president of football operations Paraag Marathe certainly waited close to the last minute to start making a series of big contract moves.

The biggest of their deals was Nick Bosa's five-year, $170 million extension that was agreed to on Wednesday and officially signed on Friday.

Yates reported on Wednesday that George Kittle and Trent Williams restructured their contracts to open up $23.2 million in cap space for San Francisco.

All of this has led to speculation about what the 49ers might be trying to do. Full details of Bosa's contract have yet to be released publicly, but there is some theorizing it could be frontloaded to help out the team on the backend.

Another potential reason to create significant cap room for 2023 is because teams are allowed to roll over any unused cap space into the following season.

The 49ers already have nine players under contract with average annual salaries of at least $13.5 million. This doesn't include Brandon Aiyuk, who will be owed $14.1 million in the final season of his rookie deal next season.

All-Pro safety Talanoa Hufanga will be extension-eligible for the first time after this season. Using the projected $256 million salary cap for 2024 by Over the Cap, the 49ers are already $9.8 million over that figure.

Having $41.5 million available to roll over would not only allow them to be cap compliant going into next offseason, but it would allow them to potentially re-sign Aiyuk and/or Hufanga without having to part ways with any of their other star players already signed to a lucrative deal.

It's also possible the 49ers are keeping options open for a potential big in-season acquisition if they want to address a position of need. They did it last season by acquiring Christian McCaffrey in a trade with the Carolina Panthers.

Armstead has spent his entire NFL career with the 49ers. He was the 17th overall pick by the organization in the 2015 draft and has recorded 28.5 sacks in 104 games.