Packers Henry Black & Chauncey Rivers Will Hit Free Agency
By Paul Bretl
Of the Green Bay Packers’ 23 free agents this offseason, eight of them fell into the exclusive rights (ERFA) category.
In case you were wondering, an exclusive rights free agent has two or fewer years of accrued NFL experience. If their team offers them a one-year deal at the league minimum (based upon their years of experience), they have to accept it and cannot negotiate with other teams.
According to Tom Silverstein, the Packers did tender contracts to ERFAs Krys Barnes, Dominique Dafney, Jake Hanson, Yosh Nijman, Randy Ramsey, and Malik Taylor.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise whatsoever. These players all have experienced playing time on the 53-man roster and will be playing on minimum contracts–which is helpful for the Packers’ salary cap situation as they build their 90-man roster without much in cap space at the moment.
However, two players who were not tendered contracts by the Green Bay Packers were Henry Black and Chauncey Rivers.
Admittedly, this did surprise me a little bit–I thought that all eight ERFAs would be back on the 90-man roster. Black and Rivers certainly wouldn’t have been locks to make the final 53-man roster, but they bring some NFL experience, would be playing on inexpensive contracts, they’d create competition on the back-end of the roster, and possibly even push for playing time.
Although Black would have his ups and downs in coverage last season, he was the Packers’ primary third safety for much of the season, playing 283 defensive snaps. He would also lead the special teams unit in tackles and finish second in snaps, according to PFF ($$).
The safety position was already a low-key need this offseason, and it just became a bit bigger. Adrian Amos and Darnell Savage are in the final year of their deals, while Innis Gaines, Vernon Scott, and Shawn Davis have combined for 90 career defensive snaps.
Rivers was signed last summer and appeared in four games with Za’Darius Smith sidelined. He would go on to record one pressure before suffering a season-ending injury.
At a minimum, Rivers could have competed with Ramsey, Tipa Galiea, Jonathan Garvin, and La’Darius Hamilton for a roster spot and playing time–which I imagine will be fairly wide open this summer when it comes to the third and fourth edge rusher roles on the Packers’ depth chart.
As Mark Eckel of Packer Report would mention, the salary cap could have been an issue for Green Bay. Although these are inexpensive, league minimum deals, the Packers just navigated their way under the salary cap ahead of the deadline, and two contracts totaling roughly $1.5 million in cap space could have been enough to put them back in the red–or at least a little too close for comfort.
This, of course, is just speculation–we don’t know what the Packers’ current salary cap situation is, but we do know they don’t have a ton of operating room at the moment. Or maybe, the Packers like what they have on the back-end of the roster at each of these positions or perhaps they will look for possible upgrades in the draft.
Black and Rivers could find their way back to Green Bay. Since they have been non-tendered, they are now unrestricted free agents and able to sign wherever they please. However, I would guess that both players will end up playing elsewhere in 2022.