NFL Hands Packers Additional Salary-Cap Space

The Green Bay Packers’ salary-cap outlook continues to brighten, though the big-picture reality remains.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers gained additional salary-cap space for the 2024 NFL season. This time, it has nothing to do with the restructuring of contracts.

As explained by OverTheCap.com, the NFL adjusted the team-by-team figures to account for incentives not earned, per-game roster bonuses not attained and workout bonuses that did not have to be paid, among other factors. 

In an e-mail from Jason Fitzgerald of OTC, the adjustment for Green Bay was $5,561,176.

According to OTC, the Packers are about $14.18 million under the salary cap. Taking the draft class into account, they have about $9.66 million in “effective” cap space.

That sure beats being one of the seven teams that are still over the cap, a list that includes the Packers’ two playoff opponents, the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys. However, using effective cap space as the reference point, the Packers are 19th in available cap – and a whopping $14.5 million away from moving up to 18th.

Moreover, their NFC North rivals are all in better spots. The Chicago Bears are fourth with $66.59 million of cap space, the division-favorite Detroit Lions are seventh with $46.32 million of cap space and the Minnesota Vikings are 15th with $30.94 million of cap space.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles, who joined the Packers in the playoffs, are $34.50 million, $33.41 million and $25.25 million under, respectively. So, of the seven NFC playoff teams, the Packers are fifth in cap space.

Still, the Packers are in a surprisingly strong position given their credit-card approach to cap management from previous offseason. The biggest financial shot in the arm: The NFL and NFLPA agreed to a league-wide salary cap of $255.4 million, a record $30 million increase over last year.

“It was a little bit unexpected,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said at the Scouting Combine. “We’re usually kind of pretty accurate with those things in kind of predicting it, but that was a bit of a surprise – but a welcome one, that’s for sure.”

With the soaring salary cap, the additional cap space and some forthcoming transactions that include the expected release of left tackle David Bakhtiari and more restructuring of contracts, the Packers should have the financial war chest to be a player in free agency.

“It’s really flexibility and how you want to approach it,” Gutekunst said. “Certainly, it gives us some breathing room to do some different things. It’s … not necessarily the players we’re going to acquire – because I felt pretty good no matter where it was going to be, being able to do that – but it’s OK, how do we structure some contracts? How do we go about managing that? It gives us a little bit more breathing room, I think.”

According to OTC, teams on average gained about $6.4 million of cap space in the latest adjustment.

Good Salary-Cap News Doesn’t Change Packers’ Reality