3 Contract Restructure Candidates for Packers to Free Up Cap Space

In case you didn’t know — I’m joking, of course — the Green Bay Packers have some difficult financial decisions to make this offseason. After pushing an absorbent amount of cap charges from 2021 into future years in order to retain most of the roster, Green Bay now finds themselves $50.7 million over the 2022 cap, according to Over the Cap.

As I discussed in my Guide to the Packers 2022 cap situation, they do have a number of ways to go about creating that cap space via veteran cuts, contract restructures, or contract extensions.

This article will focus specifically on three contract restructure candidates that the Green Bay Packers can make to free up cap space.

But before we dive into who those players are, let’s have a little refresher on how restructures work. Ideally, when reworking a deal, the player has at least two years left on their contract. The reason being is that a restructure is essentially kicking cap space down the road—so you need additional years to push those cap charges into.

The team will then take a portion of a player’s base salary and/or any roster bonus, for example, and convert it to a signing bonus. In terms of cap hits, the base salary and roster bonus have to be recognized in that current year. A signing bonus, however, can be spread out over the life of the contract.

So, as an example, a player with an $8 million base salary and three years remaining on their deal could have $6 million of that base salary converted to a signing bonus. The base salary falls to $2 million for 2022 and that $6 million signing bonus is evenly distributed over the three years ($2 million in 2022, $2 million in 2023, and $2 million in 2024), thus lowering the 2022 cap hit by $4 million ($2 million base salary plus $2 million signing bonus).

Now, there’s obviously much more to it than this, but with all the uncertainty surrounding the Green Bay Packers offseason, these three restructures that we will discuss are moves that you can pretty much anticipate taking place.

Green Bay Packers contract restructure candidate: Kenny Clark

Clark is coming off one of his most productive seasons as a pass-rusher. Really from Week 1 throughout the entire season, Clark was a game wrecker inside.

Under Joe Barry’s new defensive system, Clark had more freedom to move around and saw fewer snaps lined up in the A-gap—this led to more one-on-one opportunities. According to PFF ($$), Clark finished the season with four sacks and 68 pressures, the third-most among interior defensive linemen.

Clark signed a four-year $70 million contract extension during the 2020 season. This year, specifically, Clark comes with a $20.86 million cap hit along with a base salary of $8.25 million and a roster bonus of $6.4 million, according to Over the Cap.

So there are certainly plenty of dollars available to be converted to a signing bonus and pushed into the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

Via Packers Wire, salary cap aficionado Ken Ingalls would mention that if Green Bay added on voided years to Clark’s deal — which are essentially dummy years added to the contract as a measure to create cap space, Clark’s contract would still be terminated following the 2024 season — the Packers could create nearly $11 million in cap space this season with a contract restructure.