Packers salary cap overview: Where do things stand heading into free agency

Paul Bretl | 2/20/2025

GREEN BAY, Wis. — With the news that the NFL’s salary cap will be taking another big jump in 2025, how does that impact the Packers’ plans and where they stand relative to the rest of the NFL?

On Wednesday, Dan Graziano of ESPN reported that this year’s salary cap will fall between $277.5 million and $281.5 this season. With last year’s salary cap being at $255.4 million, that’s a year-to-year increase between $22.1 million and $26.1 million depending on where the final figure falls.

Over the Cap has since adjusted its figures to account for where this new salary cap range lies. Choosing the middle of that aforementioned range above, the Packers are currently projected to have $49.14 million in available cap space this offseason. Compared to the rest of the NFL, this ranks as the 13th most.

“I feel really good,” said Brian Gutekunst about the Packers’ salary cap situation after the season. “Russ (Ball) does a fantastic job with our cap and all the decisions we’ve made over the past few years has put us in the situation where we’re in pretty good shape right now. Again, we’ve got to keep making good decisions, and it’s never a one-year thing. You’re looking at two, three years down the road as far as how these things impact things.

“We have a lot of good players that are under rookie contracts right now, and we’ve got to make sure we’re able to extend those guys when that time comes, but I feel really good our ability to go do what we need to do to field a championship-level team.”

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Now, that $49.14 million in cap space isn’t what the Packers have to spend this offseason. There are other cap costs coming down the pipeline that will require space. This includes signing the incoming draft class, which by OTC’s projections, will cost roughly $3.1 million in additional cap space.

Green Bay will also have to construct their practice squad, leave cap space for any in-season spending, and account for the contracts of the 52nd and 53rd players on the roster (the offseason cap figure only takes into account the top 51 contracts), among other items.

Ken Ingalls, who independently tracks the Packers’ cap situation, projects that those additional costs will account for another $12.9 million in cap space. So, we put that $12.9 million figure with the $3.1 million needed to sign the draft class, and what the Packers have available to spend this offseason isn’t $49.14 million, it’s closer to $33.1 million instead.

Like every other team, the Packers have the ability to create more room if needed. This is done primarily via three different avenues: a veteran cut, a contract restructure, or in some instances, an extension.

When a player’s cap hit is larger than their dead cap hit, the team can benefit from salary cap savings by moving on from that player. The cap hit is the player’s salary cap impact if on the team, and the dead cap hit is the player’s salary cap impact even if they are playing elsewhere. Dead cap is essentially dollars that have already been paid to the player, but have not yet counted towards the salary cap.

An example of this for the Packers this offseason would be Jaire Alexander, whose future with the team is up in the air. If Alexander is a Packer in 2025, his cap hit is $24.95 million. But if released, his dead cap hit is $18.11 million. So that’s still a large chunk of cap space being devoted to Alexander even if he’s on a new team, but compared to the cap hit, the Packers actually create an additional $6.8 million in space by moving on from him.

An added wrinkle to this is a player can be designated as a post-June 1st release. In Alexander’s instance, if the Packers went that route, their cap savings in 2025 would be $17.07 million. The downside is that in the above scenario, Alexander is completely off the salary cap books in 2026. In this instance, the dead cap hit is spread out, so while it’s less in 2025, creating more cap savings now, Alexander would still count towards the 2026 salary cap at $7.87 million.

For the Packers, given that they have a number of cap hits in 2026 taking big jumps, I would guess that if they move on from Alexander, they’ll want to take on all the dead cap this year and get that deal off the books.

Another path for creating cap space is with a contract restructure–something we saw the Packers do often during the 2021 and 2022 offseasons. This is the ‘kicking the can down the road’ method, where a team takes cap charges from the current year and pushes them to future years.

Ideally, this is done when a player has multiple years left on his deal. There is obviously a ton of nuance to this, but in short, one way to accomplish this is by taking a portion of a player’s base salary, where 100% of that amount counts towards the current year’s cap, and converting some of it to a signing bonus, which can be pro-rated over the remaining life of the deal.

A very rudimentary example would be if a player has a $10 million base salary with three years left on his deal. The team could take $6 million of that and convert it to a signing bonus, allowing them to push $2 million to 2026 and $2 million to 2027, with $2 million staying behind in the current 2025 year.

The benefit to the team is that they just decreased that player’s cap hit in 2025 by $4 million. The downside, however, is that those cap charges pushed to future years don’t just disappear either. Now, the player’s cap impact in 2026 and 2027 has increased.

There are also void years that can be utilized in contract restructures, and again, was a tool Brian Gutekunst used during those 2021 and 2022 offseasons. In short, void years are dummy years added to a contract for salary cap purposes. These years are not a contract extension with the player’s deal still coming to an end at the original agreed upon time.

Instead, this is a book-keeping measure that, on paper, adds more years to a contract for cap charges in a restructure to be pushed to, thus further lowering the cap hit in the current year. But, as always, where there is give, there is take. When the player’s contract expires, the cap charges that were pushed to the void years accelerate and come due on the current year’s books, leaving behind a dead cap hit. 

Gutekunst said after the season that he likes where the Packers are at cap-wise currently. Over the last two years, the team has finally gotten out from those past restructures and the dead cap from other contracts. So restructuring deals is not something that the Packers will do just for the sake of it because, as described, there are then cap ramifications down the road to deal with that reduces future flexibility. But, for the right player, if available to the Packers in free agency, Gutekunst is always willing to make the necessary back-end moves to facilitate the acquisition.

“Certainly we’d love to be in that situation every year where you have a lot of flexibility to do what you need to do,” Gutekunst said. “I think depending on the opportunities that are out there and your football team or where you’re at can dictate some of that. Again, I think whenever there are players like X or Josh that are out there, which isn’t very often, I think even if you don’t have great flexibility, you have to really consider adding those kind of players because there’s just not that many of ’em.

“So again, I feel really good where we’re at right now, would love to stay in that kind of flexibility year to year. We’ll certainly try to do that, but at the same time if we kinda have to do some different things because we have an opportunity to acquire a player that can impact our team like these two guys did, we’ll do it.”

However, something to keep in mind when it comes to restructures, and what could reduce the Packers’ willingness to utilize this avenue this offseason is that in 2026, OTC has the Packers with the eighth-lowest available cap space. As SI’s Bill Huber points out, the cap hits for several high profile players, including Jordan Love, Rashan Gary, Kenny Clark, Xavier McKinney, Elgton Jenkins, and Josh Jacobs, all take relatively big jumps next offseason and account for a fairly big slice of the Packers’ salary cap pie.

The last path for creating can space can come via an extension. In a somewhat similar fashion to a restructure, with new years and new dollars added on to a current contract, teams can use this as an opportunity to package some of the current year’s cap charges and push them into the future years now that there is a longer contract runway.

One example here would be Jenkins, who has two years left on his deal, although we know that the Packers aren’t ones to just hand out third contracts. Zach Tom could be an extension candidate as well, but the 2025 cap savings potential is fairly low, given that he’s a fourth-round pick still playing on his rookie deal.

Really, any time between now and when free agency begins, we could see the Packers and Gutekunst begin making any of these cap moves, if that is in fact something they intend to do. Green Bay’s willingness to go down one or several of these described paths depends on how aggressive they want to be in free agency. Given that they are in fairly good salary cap standing, unlike in past years, I wouldn’t say that creating more cap space is a must this offseason.

“I think I view every offseason that we have to attack it aggressively,” said Gutekunst. “The opportunities that present themselves, whether that be free agency or trade, are different every year. Every year there’s not going to be a Josh Jacobs or an Xavier McKinney out there to go get.

“So we’ll see kinda what transpires through the free agency class – who gets re-signed, who doesn’t, if there’s salary cap casualties, if there’s trade opportunities, all those. But I think we always operate under the aggressive mindset, but we have a process that we go through and we’ll see what’s available. If it’s right for us, then we’re going to attack it. If they’re not there, it’s not there.”

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