The Green Bay Packers must make decisions about six restricted free agent players in the next five days. Of these five, one is a full-time starter, another played entry-level snaps in defense and a third was a key player in rotation. Two others fall into the backup category, making your restricted free agency decisions a little more risky.
On Friday morning, the NFL finally announced the values for the various RFA proposals, giving Packers and other teams all the information they need to make their final decisions about players in this category. Teams can make these proposals to their restricted free agents before the start of the 2021 league year on Wednesday; this gives the team the right of first refusal – the ability to match any offer sheet that the player signs with another team – and would force the team that signed the player to submit a draft choice in the specified round if the proposing team chose not to match with the business.
The tender values for 2021 are as follows:
- First round proposal: $ 4,766,000
- Second Round Proposal: $ 3,384,000
- Original round auction: $ 2,183,000
- Preemptive right proposal: $ 2,133,000
Five of the Packers’ six RFAs were uncapped players, with cornerback Parry Nickerson being the only one in the group that was called up (in the sixth round in 2018). Nickerson is therefore eligible for one of the first three proposals, with the original round proposal allowing the Packers to retrieve a draft choice for the sixth round if Nickerson signs an offer sheet with another team.
It is highly unlikely that it will make any difference to Nickerson, however, as he played only one game in 2020 and landed on the injured reserve in October. The Packers will almost certainly not use a proposal on a player in such circumstances.
The other five RFAs on the team – again, all unsigned players – are more viable candidates for a bid in some way. The only player who is a serious candidate to receive a proposal above the right level of first refusal is starting the tight end Robert Tonyan, which burst in 2020 with 52 receptions, 583 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns. A second round contest seems plausible to him, as the Packers do not seem to have any strong internal substitutes for him as an athletic tight end.
The other four RFAs are cornerback Chandon Sullivan, safety Raven Greene, defensive lineman Tyler Lancaster and reserve quarterback Tim Boyle. It can be argued that all of these players receive the preemptive right to bid, with Sullivan easily having the strongest case for having played more than 70% of the team’s defensive snaps in 2020. However, each use of this bid will cost the team approximately $ 1.5 million in effective salary cap space due to pushing a league minimum wage ($ 660,000 for first-year players) from the list of the team’s top 51 contracts. Green Bay still needs to free up limit space to use even one of these proposals, as they remain above its limit number, which the NFL set at $ 182.5 million (not counting team adjustments) earlier this week.
Stay tuned for the next few days to see how the Packers free up enough space on the lid and, at the same time, make room for some critical RFA tag decisions.