4 easiest offseason decisions for the Washington Commanders

3. Restructure Ereck Flowers’ contract

As of this writing, the Commanders have just under $32 million in cap space this offseason. That’s good for the ninth-most of any team in the NFL and gives them enough flexibility to go out and add talent in free agency.

For the sake of argument, though, let’s say Washington acquires a quarterback on a big contract. Whether it’s a Russell Wilson, Deshaun Watson, Carson Wentz or Jimmy Garoppolo, their respective deals will eat up a chunk of the cap.

Should a trade of that magnitude present itself, the Commanders should look into performing some preemptive damage control. And by that we mean restructure contracts, and Ereck Flowers is a prime candidate in that regard.

Flowers is entering the final year of his three year, $30 million contract, which includes a $9.998 million cap hit and zero dead money.

The consistency he’s shown at left guard takes releasing him out of the equation, but adding voidable years to the contract or converting some of his $9.975 million salary into a signing bonus are obvious avenues to lower his cap hit.

We’d even consider extending Flowers, as it would knock out two birds with one stone, but Washington needs to act quickly on that front before Brandon Scherff, Laken Tomlinson and others reset the market at the guard position.