Packers Salary Cap Update Following Jaire Alexander Extension
By Paul Bretl
Even with making Jaire Alexander the highest paid cornerback in football by average annual value, the Green Bay Packers were still able to free up some much-needed cap space for the 2022 season in the process.
Prior to the deal getting done, Alexander was set to play out the 2022 season on a fifth-year option, which came with a base salary of $13.29 million, and also a cap hit of that same amount. With this essentially being a one-year deal, there weren’t any future years to spread any additional cap charges to.
However, along with the new money and additional years infused into the contract, Green Bay took a large portion of that $13.29 million base salary, which from a cap perspective, has to be accounted for in the current year, and converted it to a signing bonus, which can instead be prorated over the life of the contract–thus helping to lower Alexander’s 2022 cap hit.
So now, with a base salary of $1.076 million for the 2022 season, Over the Cap has Alexander with a cap hit of $7.076 million, which has created an additional $6.2 million in cap space for the Green Bay Packers this season.
According to Ken Ingalls, who independently tracks Green Bay’s salary cap situation, he projects that the Packers have $16.89 million in available cap space following the Alexander extension.
https://twitter.com/KenIngalls/status/1526379918954733569?s=20&t=hv-03aIA9An2TrXvfKTykg
Now, I know what you’re thinking, but even with that amount of cap space, that doesn’t necessarily mean a big free agent addition is on the way. As Ken notes, there are other expenses to still be accounted for.
For starters, the Green Bay Packers still have three members of their draft class unsigned–this will account for $3.61 million, according to Over the Cap. Eventually, the Packers will have to sign a 14-player practice squad, which will account for $3.5 million in cap space by Ken’s calculations.
In addition to that, the salary cap figures we see are for the top-51 contracts on a roster, and as we all know, there are 53 players that make up a football team. So two additional contracts on the books to round out the roster will total $1.65 million in cap space. Ken also sets aside $5 million in cap space for any in-season additions, so Green Bay can sign players like Rasul Douglas or Snacks Harrison as they have in the past.
Lastly, with practice squad elevations taking place during the season where the player gets a salary boost for being on the 53-man roster for that week(s), Ken estimates that will cost $940,678. Also, any per-game bonus potential to be earned could total another $1.93 million in cap space.
Once you add all of that up, Ken projects that the Green Bay Packers have $2.7 million in available, unaccounted for cap space.
This gives Green Bay the ability to make a veteran free agent addition — or even two — and two positions where that could make the most sense are at edge rusher and cornerback–two positions very much in need of bolstering their depth.
If this is truly all the cap space that the Packers have to work with, it likely takes Julio Jones out of the equation. Perhaps Odell Beckham, who is going to miss a large chunk of the season recovering from an ACL injury, could be signed for around that amount, but we do not know when he will be available, and this is also his second ACL injury since the 2020 season.
As you can see, many of these additional incoming expenses still have to take place over the coming months–it’s not as if they are all due tomorrow. Or perhaps the Packers don’t feel the need to have the full $5 million in cap space set aside for the season, so there could be the possibility that Green Bay operates more aggressively than what Ken projects and ventures beyond that $2.7 million in available cap space.
With that said, they have very few cap-creating moves left, having used most of them already, but one that could still take place is adding voided years to Allen Lazard’s restricted free agent contract once it is signed–just as the team did with Robert Tonyan in 2021. But even if that is the case, the Packers are still fairly limited in what they can do.
While the extension for Alexander created some much-needed cap relief, that newfound cap space is more so going to be used for normal operating expenses that come during an NFL season, rather than going towards some big free agent contract.