Green Bay Packers: 5 Big Questions Heading into Free Agency

What does Preston Smith’s future hold?

As I just mentioned, the Green Bay Packers have several options when it comes to Preston Smith, and some are better than others. On his current deal, if the Packers choose to do nothing, he comes with a cap hit of $16 million—a huge amount for a player who saw his production plummet last season.

Another option is to restructure his deal, but that’s not ideal either. Any cap space saved in 2021 has to be fully recognized in 2022, the final year of his deal which already comes with a cap hit of $16.5 million. Once again, a risky move for a player that we hope bounces back.

They could ask Smith to take a pay cut, which obviously is something that he won’t want to do, but perhaps some added leverage that the Green Bay Packers have in this situation is the unknowns of free agency in a year that is flooded with veterans and teams with little spending power.

Green Bay could also choose to flat-out cut him, which would create $8 million in cap space. Or, as Albert Breer of MMQB mentioned, maybe a trade is in the works. Although I doubt it, given Smith’s hefty contract. There are clearly plenty of options; not all are good ones, however. The best two in terms of creating cap space, while also being somewhat realistic — I just don’t see a team trading for him — are to either cut Smith or have him take a pay cut.

Can the Green Bay Packers and Aaron Jones work out a deal?

The deadline to use the franchise tag came and went on Tuesday, and to no surprise, the Green Bay Packers chose not to use it on Aaron Jones. It never really made much sense, considering that the entire $8 million would have to be accounted for on this year’s salary cap. However, shortly after the deadline passed, Adam Schefter of ESPN reported that the Packers still want to sign Jones before free agency begins.

At this point, we have to take that report with a grain of salt because we’ve heard that Green Bay and Jones have been in contract talks for over a year now. I believe the first report came out at last year’s NFL Combine. But the two sides don’t appear to be close when it comes to the terms of the deal.

Back in December, Rob Demovsky of ESPN reported that the Packers offered Jones top-5 money amongst running backs in terms of average annual value but lacked those guaranteed dollars–which is incredibly important to a player. Then on Tuesday, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, said that Green Bay had offered $9 million per year, which isn’t exactly close to the $12-$13 million that Jones is expected to make in free agency.

As Andrew Brandt says, deadlines spur action, so we will see if the two sides can come to an agreement in the coming days–which according to Schefter, they are still trying to do. With that said, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.