Packer Central

Packers Restructure Douglas’ Contract to Create Cap Space

The Green Bay Packers might be done with their annual restructuring of contracts after shifting the money on Rasul Douglas' deal.

Bill Huber

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GREEN BAY, Wis. – There are a lot of couches at Lambeau Field. The Green Bay Packers have flipped just about all the cushions in search of some salary-cap change.

That search continued with a restructure of cornerback Rasul Douglas’ contract that created an additional $3.3 million of cap space. ESPN.com’s Field Yates reported the transaction on Friday morning.

Douglas was due a base salary of $3.25 million with a roster bonus of $2 million. As the Packers have done several other times this year and over the past few years, the base salary was cut to the minimum, with the difference in salary and the roster bonus combined and paid as a signing bonus, which can be prorated over the life of the contract.

With the insertion of three void years to maximize the savings, Douglas’ cap number dropped from about $7.77 million to about $4.52 million.

However, the ugly byproduct of saving money for today is a cap charge of $11.6 million in 2024 and a dead-money charge of about $2.5 million in 2025, when he no longer is under contract.

Only one other player on the roster has a roster bonus. That’s punter Pat O’Donnell, who has a base salary of $1.2 million, a roster bonus of $650,000 and a cap number of $2.375 million. The Packers could release him and save $1.25 million. That is not in the plan, a source said recently, but he probably will face a challenger.

According to OverTheCap.com, the Packers started the day with about $21.1 million of cap space. The Douglas restructure would increase that to $24.4 million. However, the Packers also have to account for their 2023 NFL Draft class and the looming trade of Aaron Rodgers. Those items would eat about half of that number.

There is one big lever to pull – at some point – and that’s outside linebacker Rashan Gary. He is scheduled to play the 2023 season on the fifth-year option, which is a guaranteed $10.892 million. There’s no doubt the Packers want to extend Gary, though his comeback from a torn ACL could delay that process.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.

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