Green Bay Packers Cut Rick Wagner & Christian Kirksey

In an offseason where the salary cap is set to drop from the $198.2 million amount that it was at in 2020, the Green Bay Packers find themselves about $20 million over the salary cap — although we don’t know the exact figure — according to Over the Cap.

This figure also doesn’t take into account any potential in-season spending, free-agent additions, the draft class, or practice squad. So, needless to say, there are several cap-saving moves that have to be made.

And after restructuring David Bakhtiari’s deal about a week ago, today the Green Bay Packers released both Rick Wagner and Christian Kirksey.

By moving on from Wagner, the Packers create $4.25 million in cap space. Wagner filled in admirably when called upon this past season despite his rough performance in the NFC Championship Game.

During the regular season, Wagner allowed just one sack and 16 pressures in 352 pass-blocking snaps, according to Pro Football Focus ($). He was also ESPN’s eighth-rated tackle by their pass blocking win rate metric.

With David Bakhtiari still recovering from his ACL injury and Billy Turner’s future beyond 2021 uncertain, addressing the tackle position in the draft was already a priority, but now it is a must.

With Kirksey, the Green Bay Packers save $5.61 million in cap space this season by moving on from him.

While a move to the Will linebacker position in Week 15 led to Kirksey making a bigger impact during those final games, prior to that, he had missed time with an injury and struggled when he was on the field. In fact, over his final five games, which include the playoffs, he was able to outperform his first eight games of the season and did so in a reduced role.

Krys Barnes ended up taking over as the Mike linebacker and will presumably assume that role again in 2021. Not to mention that Green Bay also has Kamal Martin as well. Ultimately, taking a $7.6 million cap hit for Kirksey to be ILB2 in a year with a shrinking salary cap just never made much sense.

Well, we knew moves like this were coming, and surely there will be others to follow.