While the NFL teams still don’t know the exact number of the league’s salary cap for 2021, they have a very good idea – and it will certainly be less than the number it was in 2020. With current expectations at around $ 180, 5 million, the Green Bay Packers sit about $ 28 million with about a month until the start of the league year, the deadline to be below the limit.
However, the Packers made their first capitalization adjustment for the next season. According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, Green Bay reclassified David Bakhtiari’s scheduled escalation bonus to the signing bonus, allowing the team to prorate the bonus money for the remainder of its contract – the next four years.
Now, only a quarter of the $ 11,072,000 – $ 2,768 million bonus will apply to the Packers limit in 2021, with the remaining $ 8,304 million spreading out in future years. In doing so, Packers took a large part of its capitalization deficit, although it still remains about $ 20 million above the estimated capitalization number.
General manager Brian Gutekunst and capitalization guru Russ Ball clearly still have a lot of work ahead of them if they hope to get far enough below the 2021 limit to make notable additions. Any possibility of rehiring a player like Corey Linley or Aaron Jones will require at least a few million dollars of maximum space, even for a retroactive deal, and the team still has draft choices to sign and decisions to be made about restricted free agents.
However, Packers have now at least taken the first logical step towards approaching a point where they can make some of these calls. Bakhtiari, for his part, receives the same amount of money that he would otherwise receive and helps the team a little in the process. It is a win-win situation for all parties.