Green Bay Packers are Under the Salary Cap, Now What?

At 3:00 pm CST on Wednesday, the new league year began, and that meant that the Green Bay Packers, along with the rest of the NFL, had to be under the salary cap.

At one time, the Packers found themselves around $20 million over the shrunken salary cap, but a flurry of moves over the last week put them under—barely.

About a month back, Green Bay would restructure David Bakhtiari’s deal, and they would also cut both Rick Wagner and Christian Kirksey to free up some additional cap space.

More recently, they restructured the contracts of Adrian Amos and Billy Turner; Preston Smith, and Devin Funchess took pay cuts to stay, and Za’Darius Smith restructured his deal as well.

The Green Bay Packers also spent some 2021 cap space in the process by tendering contracts to their ERFAs, as well as Chandon Sullivan and Robert Tonyan, while also re-signing Aaron Jones.

According to Tom Silverstein of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, since the season ended, the Packers cut $23.94 million in cap charges to get under the $182.5 million salary cap. However, cap space doesn’t just disappear; it gets moved, so most of that money saved in 2021 was pushed into 2022. And doing so put Green Bay about $700,000 under the salary cap, per Tom’s calculations.

So now that they managed to get under the salary cap, where do the Green Bay Packers go from here?

Well, to put it simply, there is still plenty of work to be done.

These salary cap figures that we see — whether it be Tom’s calculation, at Over the Cap, or at Spotrac — are only taking into account the top-51 players on the roster. There are several other expenses that need to be accounted for and that count against the cap–some of which include the incoming draft class, the practice squad, any in-season spending, and as we all know, there are 53 players on an NFL roster, not 51.

This also doesn’t take into account any free-agent additions either–meaning more financial moves are incoming. The two big moves still on the table for the Green Bay Packers are an extension for Davante Adams and the restructuring of Aaron Rodgers’ contract.

Adams is in the final year of his deal and comes with a $16.7 million cap hit. By converting some or all of his $12.25 million base salary to a signing bonus and adding years to his contract, the Packers can lower his cap hit in 2021 and spread it out over the life of the contract. Not to mention that they get to keep one of the game’s best on their roster beyond this season.

Rodgers’ contract runs through the 2023 season, and at the moment, he has the league’s highest cap hit for 2021 at $37.2 million. But similarly to Adams, the Packers can convert some or all of his $14.7 million base salary and/or his $6.8 million roster bonus to a signing bonus and move the cap hit into 2022 and 2023–thus reducing it this season.

At this time, I do expect both of these moves to happen. Adding more years to Adams’ contract is a no-brainer, and per Jason Wilde of the Wisconsin State Journal, the Packers already approached Rodgers about an extension after the season ended.

Ken Ingalls, who independently tracks the Green Bay Packers’ salary cap, estimates that they still need about $10.5 million in additional cap space to account for those other expenses that I mentioned above. But again, that doesn’t include any free-agent additions.

The Green Bay Packers’ “big” free agency moves this offseason, if you will, were retaining their own players. Last summer, they extended Kenny Clark, during the season they extended Bakhtiari, they just re-signed Aaron Jones, and although Preston Smith took a pay cut, he is now on the books in 2022, whereas he would have been off of them had they cut him.

Now, this isn’t to say that they won’t make a free agent addition or two either; I believe they will–but it won’t be a flashy signing. Green Bay has reportedly been active in the middle-tier cornerback, interior defensive line, and offensive line markets–all major positional needs.

So while, yes, the Green Bay Packers are under the salary cap for the time being, there are still more financial moves to come.