This has probably been addressed already but I didn't see it on an initial search:
So if Brady walks, he still incurs a 13.5m cap hit of dead money. This is 6.75m from his signing bonus each from 2020 and 2021.
If he stays, then only 6.75m of that hits in 2020.
Thus for salary cap purposes, we could pay Brady, say, 30m in 2020 and have a cap hit of 36.75m. OR we could bring in a FA QB and pay him 23.25m and we'd still have a cap hit of 36.75m.
Essentially, if we let Brady walk then it's like we're paying a FA QB an extra 6.75 million dollars. So that should be accounted for when we're making him an offer. He might want more than he usually gets, but we might as well pay him that extra 6.75 instead of setting it on fire...right?
(Or roll with Stidham for cheap obviously, which I'm not sure I'm ready for yet...)