Damn, Zona taking the entire 22M dead cap hit.
He must have REALLY wanted out.
What surprises me about this story is that they decided to take the whole cap hit this season. If they waited six days (or just designated him as a post-June-1 cut today), instead of $21,077,776 in dead money on this year's cap, they would have had $10,538,890 of dead money on this year's cap and $10,538,886 of dead money on next year's cap.
I'm not sure why they would want to do it this way.
EDITED to add: I got those numbers from Overthecap, which is usually more accurate than Spotrac when they disagree, but most media reports seem to agree with the 2023 dead-money charge that's on Spotrac. In any case, the point stands. If they had designated him for a release after June 1, they could have basically taken half the dead money on this year's cap and half on next year's.
Maybe the idea is that they
know they won't be competitive this year, and even if they're not likely to be a playoff contender next year, it
could happen, so saving $10M-$11M of cap space next year could actually make a difference.