Packers have $17 million in effective cap space still available
The Green Bay Packers suddenly have a healthy-looking cap sheet. Okay, maybe that’s not true, but they do have about $17 million worth of effective cap space–eighth-most in the NFL.
General manager Brian Gutekunst has been busy this offseason, mostly with money moves. He’s worked extremely hard to get the Packers to a legal standing in cap space and now to carve out some room for flexibility this season.
The moves he’s made may be controversial due to the large piles of money he’s pushing into future years, but there’s no arguing with the present results. Some of those moves include cutting Za’Darius Smith and Billy Turner, trading Davante Adams, re-structuring the deals of Aaron Rodgers and Preston Smith and signing Jaire Alexander to a contract extension.
The Green Bay Packers have pushed a lot of money into future years in order to create $17 million worth of effective cap space this season.
The Packers need to carry over a certain amount of money into the regular season for their practice squad and any in-season moves they may want to make, so it’s not like they have the full $17 million to spend. However, they could use some of it to entice another free agent to join their squad–a move that paid huge dividends for them last season when they signed inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell at this time of the year.
They could also go the other way if they so desire and create even more cap space since we are after June 1st. Some of the guys they could cut to save money are Dean Lowry (about $6 million), Mason Crosby ($3.4 million), or Sammy Watkins ($1.4 million).
Gutekunst has always done his due diligence as the Packers’ GM and has seemingly been in on all of the big moves made across the NFL landscape, even if they’ve rarely come to fruition in Green Bay. He’s also shown the willingness to maximize the current Super Bowl window with depth additions at key positions.
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We’ll see what, if anything, the Packers do with the cap space, but it’s nice to know they at least have something to work with to fill out their roster this summer.