Spotrac Projects Contracts for 5 Key Green Bay Packers Free Agents

NFL free agency opens on March 16th, and for the Green Bay Packers, they have 14 unrestricted free agents who are free to sign wherever they please.

Now, of course, not all will leave, even with the Packers’ salary cap situation, they’ll be able to retain at least a few of these players, but the two big question marks that many of us have are, how much spending power in free agency will Green Bay actually have? And on top of that, what will the contract offers for some of their higher-profile free agents look like?

Well, Spotrac has provided us with some insight into that second question–I’m not sure anyone has the answer to the first one. Using their market value projections, Spotrac was able to provide their best estimates on what the free-agent contracts for Davante Adams, Robert Tonyan, De’Vondre Campbell, Rasul Douglas, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling could look like.

As you can imagine, there is quite a bit involved when it comes to making these projections, and if you’d like to dive deeper into that, I suggest you click here to read more. But in short, Spotrac takes into account the player’s age and their production in key statistical categories and compares that to players at the same position who are in a similar age range and have similar production.

Spotrac is then able to get an idea of what the next contract will look like for that specific player based upon the deals of the comparison players, and they then adjust as needed — based on age and statistical differences along with the fact that contract values are continually increasing — to land on their final market value projection.

So with that out of the way, let’s take a look at what each of these key Green Bay Packers’ free agents could make this offseason on the open market.

Green Bay Packers Free Agent: Robert Tonyan

Spotrac Market Value Projection: $10.8 million per year on a 4-year deal

Of the five contract projections, this one is likely the most difficult. Tonyan had a highly efficient 2020 season in which he caught 88% of his 59 targets along with 11 touchdowns. Then this past season started off slowly and then ended prematurely due to an ACL injury.

Now Tonyan is likely to miss at least the start of the regular season — although how many games remains to be seen — and at least from a statistical standpoint, he wasn’t off to the same blazing pace that he had set in 2020–so what do NFL teams do?

As I wrote recently in my Re-Sign or Let Go & Prediction article, I do believe that the Green Bay Packers re-sign Tonyan–however, I have my doubts that it will be at this projected average annual value (AAV).

This Packers offense greatly missed his presence in the passing game last season, and currently on the roster at tight end, there isn’t anyone who can fill Tonyan’s role and impact that passing game quite like he can. Green Bay could look to the draft, but as I’ve often mentioned, rookie tight ends rarely make any sort of significant impact.