Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I saw a comment from Cousins at some point that he wants the entire contract guaranteed money, which is unprecedented in pro football, but not in some other pro sports. He's looking to lead the charge in changing the contract structure throughout the league.
Granted it would be unprecedented in pro football however there's a difference between guaranteed money and fully guaranteed money. Fully guaranteed is what a player gets at signing no matter what. A signing bonus, a tag, any fully guaranteed salary or bonuses, ect. Guaranteed money is guaranteed
if the player is still on the roster, which is generally pretty early in the year, typically not much later than the end of February. Or if injured, henceforth the term, 'guaranteed against injury only'.
For example; Derek Carr got $125M/5 years with $70.2M guaranteed of which $40M is fully guaranteed including his $12.5M signing bonus. So he gets $40M no matter what. The balance of the $30.2M in guarantees are guaranteed against injury only. In 2018 his $7.4M salary becomes fully guaranteed on 16 Mar 2018 provided he's either still a Raider or injured at that point. If he wasn't with Oakland or injured prior to that, those guarantees disappear - Carr gets nothing. He has similar guarantees in salary for 2019 & 2020, totaling $22.8M but again, he has to be a Raider or injured.
So of his $70.2M guaranteed, he knows he gets $40M (fully guaranteed) and he'll get the other $30.2M if he's still with the team in later years or injured. It's actually a pretty sweet deal for Oakland. They could part ways with him in 2019 and eat the remainder of his prorated signing bonus ($7.5M) in dead money but get a cap savings of $20M in 2019 & about another $58M back for years 2020 through 2022. Basically, they could walk away after 2 years paying out a bit under $50M & the other $75M comes off the books.
link to Carr's contact: http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/oakland-raiders/derek-carr-14445/
Anyway, could Kirk get a 100% guaranteed LTD? Probably not because no team wants to eat a huge chunk of cash if the dude gets injured. Could some player get maybe a 2 or 3 year/100% guaranteed contract? Maybe, depending on how much was
fully guaranteed versus guaranteed against injury only.