Packers: Details on Randall Cobb Restructure & Dennis Kelly Deal

The trade for Randall Cobb became official a few days ago, as did the free-agent signing of Dennis Kelly, but what we didn’t have was the full financial info for each player–a very important aspect for the cap-strapped Green Bay Packers.

With Cobb, we knew that Houston was going to pay $3 million of his $8.25 million base salary in 2021, but many expected the Packers to also restructure his deal to free up additional cap space–and that’s exactly what happened.

According to Field Yates of ESPN, Green Bay converted $4.075 million of Cobb’s $5.25 million salary to a signing bonus, and they also added a voided year in 2023. The end result was that Cobb’s 2021 cap number dropped to $2.68 million.

Cobb’s original contract ran through the 2022 season, but by adding the voided 2023 year to the contract, on paper, the Packers can now spread that $4.075 million cap hit from the converted signing bonus over three seasons. Had they done nothing, they would have incurred the full cap hit in 2021, or if they restructured the contract but didn’t add the voided year, then the $4.075 million in cap charges would have been divided over two years (2021 and 2022–the life of the contract) rather than three years as it is now.

The downside to this is that when the Green Bay Packers inevitably cut Cobb after the 2021 season in favor of the $6.8 million in cap savings, those cap charges pushed to the voided 2023 year accelerate and come due. While the Packers were able to create cap relief in 2021, they’ve increased the dead cap charges that they will incur in 2022 when they move on from Cobb.

When it comes to Kelly’s deal, it is much simpler. According to Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Kelly has signed a one-year deal worth $1.325 million and includes a base salary of $1.075 million and a signing bonus of $250,000.

At this time, Over the Cap has the Green Bay Packers with $13.28 million in available cap space; however, that does not include Kelly’s contract–so subtract his base salary and signing bonus from the $13.28 million figure.

As I wrote about recently, it is clear that the Packers are all-in on the 2021 season, and there is going to be some financial pain in 2022 as the team is currently $50.81 million over the projected salary cap. With that said, since they are all in on this season, with that remaining cap space, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them make another addition, whether that be through free agency or trade at some point this season.