The Super Bowl is upon us, and for the 15th consecutive season, the Green Bay Packers are not playing in it.
The Packers made the postseason with a 9-7-1 record and bowed out in the first round of the postseason with a collapse in the fourth quarter against their most hated rival, the Chicago Bears.
Now, the attention in Green Bay turns to the offseason and how they’ll be able to improve the team and bring back some of the players set to be free agents.
The NFL has had a salary cap since free agency began in 1993, with one major exception. The NFL was uncapped before the collective bargaining agreement expired during the 2010 season.
Ironically enough, that’s the year that the Green Bay Packers, the NFL’s smallest market, won the Super Bowl.
The Packers used their cap space a season ago to acquire Micah Parsons, and it was the most impactful move they’ve made since signing Reggie White all the way back in 1993.
The salary cap can be manipulated with different levers, triggers and separate rules to restructure contracts. That just simply moves money into the future.
We’ve seen the Packers operate that way in the twilight years of Aaron Rodgers. For example, David Bakhtiari was no longer on the team in 2024, but due to some of the restructuring and moving of money within his contract, he was still counting against Green Bay’s salary cap.
Kenny Clark was an example of that during the 2025 season as well. Sometimes, it’s a price worth paying to keep players in the present. Other times, it can end in disaster.
Saving cap space is the name of the game when resources are not unlimited like they are for some teams in Major League Baseball.
One way to do that is to pay a player with signing bonuses up front to spread the money across several years to save money against the cap.
According to X, Packers salary cap guru Ken Ingalls said one of the best examples of this practice is quarterback Jordan Love.
Love received a $75 million signing bonus when he signed his new contract in 2024; it was spread across the cap over five years and paid in $15 million installments.
The bet the Packers are making is that Love will be their quarterback for the next five years, which after the way he played this season, he absolutely should be.
If, for whatever reason, the Packers decided to move on, there would be ramifications in the form of dead cap. That happens when a player’s money counts against the salary cap without him being on the team.
A present example would be like what we just talked about with Love. Love has been paid $30 million of that signing bonus due to the two installments of the $75 million signing bonus, there would be a $49.9 million dead cap charge for the remainder of the guaranteed money on Love’s contract, in addition to the additional $45 million they would owe him.
Most examples are not that extreme, but the possibility of dead cap is one of the risks that teams take when they hand out market-setting contracts and push money into the future.
Think of it like consistently paying the minimum on your credit card statement.
In terms of what is available to the Packers for this offseason, that is to be determined. There are some moves that they will have to make to get under the salary cap just to operate in 2026.
One of the easiest moves for them will likely be releasing offensive lineman Elgton Jenkins.
Jenkins did not look like the same player last year, and releasing him will create about $19 million in salary cap space.
Other potential cut candidates to save cap space include defensive end Rashan Gary, running back Josh Jacobs, cornerback Keisean Nixon and kicker Brandon McManus.
The Packers will be able to use some money in free agency, but how much they’ll have to spend will depend on what they do with some of the aforementioned players. They’ll also likely be restructuring some contracts and pushing money into the future.
That’s the price of having a market-setting quarterback and a star defensive player like Parsons.
Of all their players who are set to be free agents, the most likely to be re-signed appeared to be Quay Walker, but he noted midseason they had not talked about his contract in quite some time.
Don’t be surprised if any of Green Bay’s pending unrestricted free agents like Walker, Romeo Doubs and Rasheed Walker all end up playing elsewhere in 2026.
