The Green Bay Packers’ 17-point comeback win over the New Orleans Saints on Sunday at Lambeau Field was impressive enough on its own. The 2023 home opener. Down big in the fourth quarter. Jordan Love’s first start in Green Bay. Facing a top defense. Coming off last week’s disappointing finish in Atlanta.
The victory is made even more incredible when considering who wasn’t available for Matt LaFleur’s team by the fourth quarter on Sunday.
Maybe the best way to understand what was missing for the Packers is looking at the salary cap. Per Ken Ingalls, the Packers didn’t have 53 percent of their total 2023 salary cap available when accounting for hurt or inactive players and dead cap money.
The 2023 Salary Cap is $224.8M.
Today the Green Bay Packers played & won a football game with $118.5M (53%) of cap space unavailable on the field.
Dead: $59.34M
PUP: $3.25M
IR: $1.03M
Bakh: $21.34M
Jaire: $10.76M
Jones: $8.20M
Jenkins: $6.97M
Campbell: $5.53M
Watson: $2.10M— Ken Ingalls – Packers Cap 💰 (@KenIngalls) September 25, 2023
Over half the team’s cap commitments in 2023 didn’t play or got hurt.
The Packers are playing every game this season down almost $60 million on the cap due to dead cap money. Most of the charge is from trading Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets. Overall, the Packers have 16 players no longer on the roster with charges on the cap this season.
Currently injured players only added to the challenge. Aaron Jones, Christian Watson, David Bakhtiari, Elgton Jenkins and Jaire Alexander were all inactive. The five account for roughly $50 million in cap commitments in 2023. By the fourth quarter, the Packers didn’t have linebacker De’Vondre Campbell, who went out with an ankle injury. That’s another $5.5 million. The six players are not only expensive on the cap but hugely important to what the Packers do on offense and defense.
Add in the players on IR (such as Tyler Davis) and the PUP list (Eric Stokes) and the Packers were down $118 million worth of players on the 2023 cap when Love and what was left of the Packers defense mounted an incredible comeback from 17-0 down.
Despite all the variables working against the Packers, LaFleur’s team found a way to get it done.
First-year starting quarterback? Rookies all over on offense? No playmaker at running back? No top deep threat? Offensive line missing its top two players? No All-Pro cornerback? No All-Pro linebacker? The challenges mattered for the Packers during the first three quarters, but a resilient fourth-quarter performance overcame it all on Sunday at Lambeau Field.