Retiring vs releasing

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I don't think it necessarily affects the cap any differently. Part of dead money is the signing bonus that is prorated to hit the cap over the life of the contract. When the player separates from the team before the contract is over what is left of the prorated bonus has to hit the cap all at once because a team can't get away with that money never being accounted for under the cap in some way. This is true regardless of how the player is separated I think.

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When a player is released (or retires), the team is relieved of having the pay the player’s base salary (P5) and any Roster Bonus that may become due after that, but still will need to account for any Signing or Option Bonus prorations that haven’t yet counted against the Salary Cap.

Using the contract example above, if the player was released in year 4 of the deal, the team would not have to pay that Roster Bonus or the player’s base salary (P5) of $7M (or any base salaries thereafter).  However, the year 4 Bonus pro-rations ($2M + $1M) would still count and the year 5 Bonus prorations ($2M + $1M) would accelerate and immediately count against the Cap in year 4.  So, the team would still have to account for $6M of the player’s remaining Bonus prorations.  Since he was expected to count $10M against the Cap had he been on the team (his Cap number), the team would realize a Cap savings of $4M due to his release and have to carry $6M in “dead money” against the Salary Cap in year 4.

Since the prorations from year 5 accelerated against the Cap, there will be no future Cap implications from the release.

The retirement of a player is treated the same as the release of a player.

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