How Bad Is The Packers Salary Cap Situation?
NFL announces official Salary Cap Number for 2023
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It is now that time of the year where we look at the Packers salary cap and realize that they have to make adjustments to multiple players contracts to squeeze under the salary cap by the start of the league year.
As the years have gone by I’ve come to learn that it is very easy for teams to mess with players’ contracts to free up cap space in a hurry. This is exactly what the Packers will do once again, restructure players contracts to free up space for 2023.
Today the NFL came out and made the official announcement of the 2023 salary cap number.
As the NFL TV deals get larger and larger the salary cap goes higher and higher. According to Tom Pelissero the cap has jumped up 16 million dollars from 2022 to 2023. Even with the salary cap going up 16 million the Packers are currently $16,483,743 over the cap according to overthecap.com.
The Packers have the 8th worst cap situation in the NFL.
The league worst is the New Orleans Saints who are about 58,000,000 over the cap. Let’s just be glad we are not the Saints. 16 million is much easier to clear than 58 million. Good luck to whoever runs the numbers and contracts for the Saints. You’ve got your work cut out for you.
Now let’s take a look at where the Packers may be able to restructure contracts to free up space to get under the salary cap.
Here are a few options the Packers have when it comes to restructuring contracts according to Ken Ingalls who covers the Packers salary cap in great detail on twitter.
Potential Cap Savings With Simple Restructures:
David Bakhtiari: 7.51 mil
Kenny Clark: 10.37 mil
Jaire Alexander: 8.86 mil
Aaron Jones: 10.51 mil
Preston Smith: 6.25 mil
De’Vondre Campbell: 2.46 mil
Rasul Douglas: 2.08 mil
If I’m honest NFL players’ contracts and restructures are pretty confusing. But as you can see the Packers can easily maneuvere their way to get under the salary cap. Add all of these potential restructures up and that equals 48.04 million of cap savings. The Packers could also decide to cut certain players which would lead to potential cap savings. Restructures do mean that you are pushing that money into future years which will affect future years of the salary cap. You will have to pay eventually.
So to sum it all up even though the Packers have the 8th worst cap situation in the NFL, it should be very easy to solve. Let’s hope they can clear enough space for potential free agent moves this off-season. Sure the Packers only need to clear up about 16 mil to get under the cap, but if we want to have money to play with we’ll need to clear much more room.