Tag: League Year

Packers get under 2023 salary cap by restructuring deals for Aaron Jones, Jaire Alexander and Preston Smith

The Packers, after three easy-to-predict contract restructures, now sit at roughly $6.4 million in 2023 salary cap space. But more work still needs to be done.

Three restructured contracts provided almost $28 million in salary cap relief and put the Green Bay Packers a little over $6 million under the 2023 salary cap with about two weeks before the start of the new league year.

The Packers restructured deals for running back Aaron Jones, cornerback Jaire Alexander and outside linebacker Preston Smith – three foundational players on the roster – to create the salary cap relief.

According to Over the Cap, the Packers are now $6.43 million under the cap.

In all three restructures, the Packers converted base salary and roster bonuses into signing bonuses and added a void year to maximum the salary cap savings in 2023.

Jones’ restructuring saved roughly $11.8 million. Restructures for Alexander and Smith saved approximately $9.5 million and $6.7 million, respectively. Add it up, and the Packers shaved $27.96 million off the cap in three relatively easy moves.

Having convertible roster bonuses in place with Jones, Alexander and Smith gave the Packers easy levers to pull to dig out of the salary cap hole.

More space can be created in this fashion. Deals for Kenny Clark, David Bakhtiari, De’Vondre Campbell and Rasul Douglas, for instance, can all be restructured to push cap commitments into the future and create space in 2023.

More work needs to be done. While the Packers are now under the cap ahead of the new league year, the team will need to pay for signing free agents (including a restricted tender for Yosh Nijman), the incoming draft class, next year’s practice squad and provide an emergency fund for the regular season. In fact, Ken Ingalls has the Packers at around $13 million over the cap in effective terms, meaning more cap-saving moves will be required over the next few weeks and months.

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Tracking Packers’ moves to get under the salary cap before 2023 league year

Tracking all the moves the Packers make to get under the NFL’s salary cap by the start of the new league year on March 16.

The Green Bay Packers entered another offseason needing to clear salary cap space to get under the NFL’s salary cap by the start of the new league year on March 16.

General manager Brian Gutekunst and executive VP Russ Ball will need to restructure the contracts of veterans and make tough roster decisions to get under the cap and clear enough space to both sign a draft class and operate during the 2023 season.

For reference, here are all the moves the Packers made last year to get under the cap in time.

Back to 2023. Here’s a running list of the moves made by the Packers to get under the salary cap by mid-March:

Tracking Packers’ moves to get under the salary cap before 2022 league year

The Packers are attempting to shed over $50 million from the salary cap before the start of the 2022 league year. Here are all the moves made so far.

The Green Bay Packers entered the 2022 offseason needing to clear around $50 million in salary cap commitments before the start of the new league year on March 16.

The tally will rise by a little over $20 million if the Packers end up using the franchise tag on All-Pro receiver Davante Adams.

The team will use restructures and releases on veterans to trim commitments from the salary cap. By the end of last offseason, the Packers had released a few players and restructured every veteran contract available to get into a comfortable cap position.

Just as much work needs to be done over the next few weeks.

Here’s a running list of the moves made by the Packers to get under the salary cap by mid-March:

Free agency starts early (again)

If you were to look at the NFL calendar – which is now constantly changing due to the novel coronavirus situation in the country – it says that free agency doesn’t actually start until March 18. Yet, today, which is March 16, we were bombarded with …

If you were to look at the NFL calendar — which is now constantly changing due to the novel coronavirus situation in the country — it says that free agency doesn’t actually start until March 18. Yet, today, which is March 16, we were bombarded with news about free agents signing new deals — and check out the grades here. It is very obvious that March 16 is not March 18, so what gives?

See, there’s this thing called the legal tampering period. It runs from March 16 to March 18 and it is designed for free agents to start speaking to potential suitors. Those two days are intended to be a time for players to take visits, agents to hammer out deal, and then on March 18 free agency starts. That’s not how it works.

Tampering doesn’t start on March 16 because if it did, there would be no way to announce complex deals. No, tampering starts almost immediately after the Super Bowl is over, hits a peak at the NFL Draft Combine, and is really done by March 16 because deals are announced on March 16. Obviously, all the tampering is happening outside of the legal tampering period. This doesn’t even count tampering through the media when teams or agents give

The thing is teams don’t care. The Patriots essentially let tampering go on the entire time the Tom Brady rumor mill has been churning — and it’s been happening since the week after Super Bowl. Everyone is doing it, so no one wants tampering to be regulated. If everyone is breaking the rules then no one is breaking the rules. Tampering happening during the season is slightly more frowned upon, but tampering rules, in general, aren’t a huge focus of the league.

So in reality, free agency starts almost immediately after the season ends. The only reason to keep a tampering period is for current teams to get the first crack at the player who may leave. The thing is, those teams had the option to extend that player the season before. They have a whole year to negotiate with their agent. There’s a huge need to give current teams the first crack at it because they’ve had that option for a long time.

Let’s say we still keep a moratorium. Players can only come to deals with their teams up until the combine. That makes sense because after the combine all bets are off, so there’s no reason to have an official tampering period listed as an event.

Call it what it is. The NFL starts free agency three — or however many days it wants before the official start of the season — and then players officially agree to a deal that they are bound to which goes into cap-math effect on the start of the new season. The other option is to just start the new year at the same time as what is now called the free agency tampering period. It’s a way to make sure players can’t back out of deals — even if that is rare. Hey, it could even help spread out some of the paperwork. Imagine getting all these contracts and filing them with the league on March 18 because we know those deals are coming March 16.