Predicting the 12 Moves that get Green Bay Packers Under the Salary Cap
By Paul Bretl
Green Bay Packers Extend Adrian Amos
Projected Cap Savings: $5.1 million
Although this offseason is certainly going to be filled with numerous challenging financial and personnel decisions for Brian Gutekunst and Russ Ball to make–extending Adrian Amos is one of the easier ones.
At 28-years-old, Amos is playing his best football and should be considered one of the best safeties in the game. He’s incredibly reliable and always seems to be in the right place, whether that be against the run, in the passing game, or making a tackle. From a positional standpoint, the safety depth on this roster is incredibly thin, with a lot of question marks and Darnell Savage coming off a down season.
With 2022 being the final year of his contract and a current cap hit of almost $12 million, an extension will lower his current cap hit and keep him a Green Bay Packer for the foreseeable future.
Green Bay Packers Extend Preston Smith
Projected Cap Savings: $8.7 million
A year ago, I’m not sure many of us thought that we would be having this discussion, but here we are. Smith is coming off a season in which he was one of the most productive edge rushers in football, ranking 10th in pressures among edge rushers, according to PFF ($$), and 13th in PFF’s pass-rush productivity measurement.
As far as the edge rusher position goes, while Gary was certainly dominant, every edge rusher needs help, and this is way too important of a position to cut both Preston Smith and Za’Darius Smith–that would leave the edge rusher room lacking some serious depth after what we saw from Jonathan Garvin and Tipa Galeai last season.
As I mentioned in my Cut ’em or Keep ’em & Prediction series, I would much rather have Preston Smith and save $8 million than not have Preston Smith and save $12.4 million.