Can they pay 12m and then trade him for a bunch of picks?
The trade would need to be executed before March 31. After that that the bonus is all ours. It could be done. Perhaps there would be a team that would give us draft choices for a 1-year rental of Revis, or perhaps the patriots would allow him to work out a deal with another team.
However, we would need to replace the $20M of cap room (or a lot of it) in the meantime or be shut out of the free agent market.
Again, this is possible through several restructures. Miguel has posted the details several times.
Browner
Brady
Gronkowski
Browner
Arrington
Amendola
Mayo
The above restructures add up to almost $20M. Note that Mayo would likely need to be paid full compensation to do a restructure now. Also, new players could be signed to contracts that have low front ends. For example, Wilfork could be signed to 3-year contract with a $9M bonus and a $1M 2015 salary, rather than simply paying him $4M for 2015. Usually, we don't this. However, since $20M would be coming back, some of that would be kept for the future rather than used in 2015.
All the above restructures sound difficult. They are not. The only substantive discussions would be with Amendola and Mayo. The others are no-brainers for the players as well as the team.
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BOTTOM LINE
This could be done. However, this would take cooperation from Revis. The team could trade him as a 1-year deal, but he could threaten a sit out and show up in August. Besides, for the patriots to get maximum compensation, we would want him to go to a team where a long-term has been worked out. A team would more for this than for a 1-year deal.
FINALLY
If the team did pay the bonus and made a trade AFTER March 31, then the $12M would be patriot dead money, but Revis would be more valuable with an $8M cap hit.
IN CONCLUSION
I don't think that this will happen unless Revis is fully on board.