Let an off-season of major financial decisions begin for the Green Bay Packers.
According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the Packers converted David Bakhtiari’s $ 11,447,000 on-call bonus in 2021 into a signature bonus, creating about $ 8.3 million in immediate wage limit space.
By transforming the on-call bonus – a single payment due next month – into a subscription bonus, Packers can spread the entire payment over the duration of the deal, prorating the salary cap over the next four seasons.
The advantage is a significant amount of cover space freed up at present. The downside is that all that money will be added to Bakhtiari’s salary cap in the coming seasons.
The change was expected and necessary. With an ever lower wage cap, the Packers entered the off-season with the need to release about $ 30 million just to close the cap at the start of the new league year. The Bakhtiari bonus conversion was the easiest and most sensible way to immediately create the cover space.
The Packers will still be very busy the rest of the way. More money must be poured from the limit just to operate this off season. Expect more restructuring and Packers casualty limits in the coming weeks.
Here are 10 reasonable moves (including the Bakhtiari restructuring) that Packers can make to clear the boundary space, and here are 10 potential victims of the boundary.