Green Bay Packers: A Look at the 2021 Pending Free Agents & Quick Predictions

Welcome to the offseason, everybody! Sorry you had to be here so soon. For the Green Bay Packers, as well as the rest of the NFL, this is likely going to be an offseason unlike any other, with a whole new set of challenges due to the salary cap likely dropping. You can read more about this here.

The salary cap in 2020 sat at 198.2 million and had risen by at least $10 million in each of the previous seven seasons. So in recent offseasons, as teams make and structure deals, they are under the impression that the cap will likely continue to rise, or at the worst, remain the same. However, I doubt any team expected a scenario where it plummets to as low as $175 million.

As Brian Gutekunst said in his end of the season press conference, there are going to be a lot of “tough decisions.” Cuts will have to be made, contracts restructured, and it’s certainly going to affect free agency.

When it comes to the Green Bay Packers, they have 24 free agents of their own to make decisions on, and they fall into one of three categories. There is the well-known unrestricted free agent, the restricted free agent, and the exclusive rights free agent.

Below I will cover what it means to be an exclusive rights, restricted, and unrestricted free agent, which players fall into each category, along with some quick thoughts on each pending free agent. Let’s take a look at some of the decisions Gutey has to make this offseason.

Green Bay Packers Exclusive Rights Free Agents

The term ‘Exclusive Rights Free Agents’ has “free agent” in it, but they aren’t really that free. These players have less than three years of accrued NFL experience, and if offered a league minimum contract, they are unable to negotiate with other teams.

Allen Lazard

Yosh Nijman 

Randy Ramsey

Malik Taylor

I promise, on the other free agents I do go into detail on each player, but these four are pretty simple. I expect all of them will be back in 2021.