Green Bay Packers: 3 Salary Cap Saving Moves to Make in 2021

With the NFL salary cap being reduced in 2021, here are three ways that the Green Bay Packers can create more available cap space this upcoming offseason.

Even before the 2020 season had begun, there were many already focused on the Green Bay Packers’ 2021 offseason. One big reason was that the Packers had several high-profile free agents to make decisions on. This group at one time included David Bakhtiari, along with Kenny Clark, and now includes just Corey Linsley, Aaron Jones, Kevin King, and Jamaal Williams. The other reason was because of their tight salary cap situation.

The 2020 offseason was one in which GM Brian Gutekunst had to be frugal. Rather than making a few big splashes as he did in 2019, Gutey had to go bargain hunting in free agency. And 2021 was shaping up to be quite similar. However, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has made things much more difficult for the Packers as well as the rest of the NFL.

With no fans in the stands, or very few, before the season, the NFL and NFLPA agreed to a salary cap floor in 2021 of $175 million. This is a steep drop from this season’s $198 million salary cap that, under normal circumstances, would have increased. While the hope is that the cap doesn’t fall to the $175 million mark, it is going to decrease, which means Green Bay is going to have to find ways to create cap space.

Fortunately, under former GM Ted Thompson, and now Gutekunst along with Russ Ball, the Packers’ salary cap has been managed exquisitely over the years. But like every other team, they’ll have to cut costs.

So how do they go about doing that? Well, there are three types of moves that can be made to create significant cap space, and chances are Gutekunst and company will have to utilize all of them in order to cut their 2021 cap by roughly $40 million, at the bare minimum, according to Packers’ salary cap guru Ken Ingalls.

Veteran Cuts

We will begin with the most obvious cap saving maneuver, and that is moving on from those high-priced veteran players who haven’t quite lived up to their contracts over the last year. In order to determine which players fall into this category, there are two parts of their contract that you want to look at; the cap hit, and the dead cap hit.

The cap hit is money that will be on the books if the player is on the roster that season and the dead cap hit is money that has essentially already been paid to the player. So even if the team were to move on from him, that dead cap figure still counts towards the salary cap. A good example would be Preston Smith, who in 2021 has a cap hit of $16 million but a dead cap hit of only $8 million. Meaning, if the Green Bay Packers were to cut him, they will save $8 million next season.

On the flip side, if a player’s dead cap hit is more than their cap hit, then it really doesn’t make much sense to let them go since you’ll be paying more money not have them on the roster than if you brought them back.

A few cap casualties to keep your eyes on this coming offseason include the aforementioned Preston Smith, Dean Lowry ($3.3 million in savings), Chrisitan Kirksey ($6 million), Rick Wagner ($4.25 million), and Devin Funchess ($1.3 million), whose 2020 contract roles over to 2021 since he decided to opt-out.