What to Know About Rodgers’ Extension with Green Bay Packers
By Paul Bretl
A week ago, we learned from Aaron Rodgers himself that he would be back with the Green Bay Packers. And while there were rumors of what his extension was going to look like, those figures weren’t released until today.
According to Ian Rapoport, Rodgers and the Packers agreed to a three-year extension with $150.6 million guaranteed. There are also two low-cost option years on the back-end of the deal. Rapoport adds that Rodgers will “likely” retire after that third year but if he wants to continue playing, those option years can be reworked.
Rodgers’ cap hit in 2022 prior to this deal was $46.6 million, however, it will now fall to $28.5 million, according to Mike Garafolo—saving the Packers about $18 million in cap space. Rodgers’ cap hit in 2023 will be $31.6 million and $40.7 million in 2024.
In terms of the money that Rodgers will receive, he will earn $42 million in 2022, $59.5 million in 2023, and $49.3 million in 2024.
With this move complete, the Packers should be fairly close to being under the salary cap. They, along with the rest of the NFL, will have to be out of the red by 3:00 CST on March 16th—the start of the new league year.
With that said, other cap-saving moves will still likely be made as Green Bay will need some room to navigate free agency. A few potential moves include extensions for Jaire Alexander or Adrian Amos. Restructuring Dean Lowry’s deal and possibly cutting Randall Cobb.
Rasul Douglas, Allen Lazard, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Whitney Mercilus, Corey Bojorquez, and eight ERFAs, among others, still remain unsigned—although expectations certainly shouldn’t be that Green Bay will retain all of them, a number of the Packers free agent class will be playing elsewhere.
Given the magnitude of the cap hits that come with this extension, as well as the dead cap hits each season, the structure of Rodgers’ contract indicates that there won’t be any questions about retirement for at least the next few offseasons.
Getting out of this deal for the Packers is nearly impossible during that span — although after going through all of this, why would they want to? — and if Rodgers were to retire, he would leave the Packers in a world of financial hurt. As Tom Pelissero points out, Rodgers’ dead cap hit following the 2023 season is a whopping $68.2 million.
When the time comes that Rodgers does retire, the Green Bay Packers could very well find themselves in rebuild mode as they try to work themselves into a better place financially.
As we’ve discussed before, the salary cap is all about tradeoffs. The Green Bay Packers are clearly sacrificing financial flexibility in the future with hopes of winning a Super Bowl over the next two to three years.
For Jordan Love, this ultimately means that he will finish out his rookie deal on the sidelines, which means trading him makes all the more sense—especially with this being a down quarterback draft class. However, as I wrote recently, Green Bay also shouldn’t trade him just for the sake of trading him—make sure it is a worthwhile deal. There is still value in having a backup with multiple years of experience in the system.
Rodgers is coming off back-to-back MVP seasons, and with him under center for the next few years, the Packers will continue to operate aggressively when it comes to the salary cap in an attempt to win another Super Bowl, knowing that down the road, there will be some financial pain.