{"id":836745,"date":"2026-03-27T11:42:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/836745\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T11:42:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:42:23","slug":"contract-details-for-patriots-free-agency-signing-james-hudson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/836745\/","title":{"rendered":"Contract details for Patriots free agency signing James Hudson"},"content":{"rendered":"

When looking at a list of New England Patriots contracts you can see that three players appear to have signed almost identical deals. Linebacker K.J. Britt<\/a>, cornerback Kindle Vildor<\/a> and offensive tackle James Hudson<\/a> all joined the team this offseason on one-year pacts with the same base salaries and, despite differences in signing bonuses, workouts bonuses and guarantees, the same salary cap hits.<\/p>\n

The reason for that is that all three signed so-called veteran benefit deals, which in turn allows the Patriots to lower their impact against the cap.<\/p>\n

OT James Hudson III: Contract details<\/p>\n

Base value: $1,402,500
Maximum value: $1,402,500<\/p>\n

Guarantees: $537,500
Signing bonus: $137,500
Salary (2026): $400,000<\/p>\n

2026 (age 27):
Base salary: $1,215,000
Signing bonus: $137,500
Workout bonus: $50,000
Salary cap hit: $1,262,500<\/p>\n

As discussed previously, in order to qualify for a veteran salary benefit, qualifying unrestricted free agents will have to sign one-year deals at the minimum salary for their experience in the league. In Hudson\u2019s case, just like in K.J. Britt\u2019s and Kindle Vildor\u2019s that salary is $1.215 million.<\/p>\n

Adding his signing and workout bonuses to the mix would typically result in a cap number of $1.403 million. However, the benefit allows for a $140,000 reduction of that cap hit.<\/p>\n

The most interesting number from our perspective is therefore the guaranteed salary, which at $400,000 is slightly lower than Britt\u2019s $500,000 but higher than Vildor\u2019s $300,000. In the grand scheme of things, however, those differences are minimal and will have a limited impact on whether or not one player will make the team over the other.<\/p>\n

That said, the inclusion of that guarantee is a way for the Patriots to sweeten the deal without violating the expenditure restrictions of the veteran salary benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When looking at a list of New England Patriots contracts you can see that three players appear to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":836746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,52640,57412,13788,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-836745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-england","10":"tag-new-england-patriots","11":"tag-new-england-patriots-analysis","12":"tag-new-england-patriots-free-agency","13":"tag-new-england-patriots-salary-cap","14":"tag-newengland","15":"tag-newenglandpatriots","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116300962642077046","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}