Perhaps more so than any offseason in the past, many were locked into the Green Bay Packers salary cap situation.
Despite falling short of the Super Bowl once again, this was a Super Bowl-caliber roster and a team that was arguably the best in football for much of last season.
The only addition that could potentially fall into that category was the recent signing of linebacker De’Vondre Campbell to a one-year deal.
Now, of course, in order to make all of these signings, the Packers had to create some serious cap space along the way.
Many assumed that Preston Smith was going to be cut this offseason after a down 2020 campaign, but instead, he and the Packers agreed to an incentive-laden pay cut.
The benefit of restructuring a deal is that teams are able to clear cap space in the current year by turning a portion of a player’s base salary into a signing bonus and prorating that cap hit out over the life of the deal.
The issue for the Packers, however, is that in order for this to truly be effective, they needed contracts that have multiple years left on the deal.
However, other than Bakhtiari, that wasn’t the case for the Packers, which meant that they had to get creative by adding voided years to several contracts.
When you hear the phrase “kicking the can,” that’s exactly what this is.
And as Brian Gutekunst told us this prior to the draft, there are a handful of contracts that the team wanted to address in the coming months.
When looking at how much cap space a team has, it’s important to keep in mind that there are several expenses not accounted for.
That cap figure also only accounts for the top-51 contracts on the roster—and as we all know, there are 53.
Depending on how training camp and the preseason unfold, there are some veteran cuts that could take place that provide some needed cap relief.
Another cap-saving avenue for the Green Bay Packers is with contract extensions.
While there are a number of cap-saving maneuvers that can be made, and we’ve touched on them, at some point, those cap charges must come due.
According to Ken Ingalls, Packers’ salary cap guru, this offseason, the team has pushed $37 million worth of cap charges from 2021 into future years, with $22 million of that coming due in 2022.