The New England Patriots traded safety Kyle Dugger to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Tuesday, but they will not entirely remove him from their pay roll. Besides his signing and offseason bonuses remaining
on the team’s books, they will also pick up parts of Dugger’s remaining base salary for the 2025 NFL season.
According to a report by Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, New England is going to be “paying most of [the] $5.4 million that’s left of Kyle Dugger’s original base of $9.75 million” in order to complete the deal. Dugger’s per-game roster bonuses of upward to $530,000 are also affected by this.
The originally reported structure of the move was Dugger plus a 2026 seventh-round draft pick transferring from New England to Pittsburgh in return for a 2026 sixth-round selection. The salary and roster bonus concessions made by the Patriots served as a deal-sweetener — one the cap-rich team can financially afford, even though it changes the bottom-line impact the deal has on its books.
Rather than create around $5.8 million, the move will result in a net loss of cap space. As broken down by salary cap expert Miguel Benzan, the Patriots will have lost close to $8 million in 2025 once the trade becomes official.
The outlook for the other two seasons left on Dugger’s original contract extension signed in 2024 is more favorable: the Patriots created savings of $16.9 million (2026) and $18 million (2027) over the next two seasons. The two sides had originally agreed to a four-year, $58 million deal last April.
Dugger himself, meanwhile, will become an unrestricted free agent next offseason. According to Rapoport, the final two years of his pact have been wiped out as part of the move that sent the 29-year-old to the AFC North.
