2024 Salary Cap Thread.

Also have to figure out Love's contract extension.

I’m in favor of the cuts but don’t want to see too much kicking the can with extensions.  

If I recall correctly, after the cuts and a reasonable Jones restructure to a 3 year deal, they will have about 35 million.

Now they have to extend Love and possibly Clark.  More room will come available in 2025 when Bahk has cleared the books.  

But…. The stellar draft class of 2023 will be approaching FA in 2026 and our cheap production from Tom, Walker, Doubs, and Watson will get exponentially more expensive as they look for extensions.   (Quay and Wyatt were 1st round so the team gets a 4th year option I believe)

I think the go for it year is 2025 while you still have the 2023 and 2022 draft classes on the cheap.  That’s the year to make a splash in FA.

I think they should frontload Loves cap numbers while we have the cap space and most of our young talent is on rookie deals.

This allows us to have a lot of cap space later to sign all those rookies to 2nd contracts and gives us an out if Love somehow turns into Mac Jones and slumps badly.

1st round picks have a 5th year option, that has to be exercised before the 4th year.

The Packers weathered a perfectly nasty storm on the cap side over the last few years. They didn't make it through unscathed, but they did survive the worst of it and kept winning.

The timing of the pandemic totally fucked over Gute's plan to go for it with AR and then transition smoothly to Love. Right at the moment when GB needed maximum cap space & flexibility, the pandemic hit and actually reduced cap space and screwed their careful planning.

NFL Salary Cap dropped from $198M down to $182M, instead of going up to $208M as had been the trend to that point in time - a surprise gap of over $26M for Russ Ball and the other capdudes to deal with.

While this is happening, the Packers are trying to push all their chips in to win another Title with Rodgers, so they are bloated with veteran contracts. Without the pandemic, they'd have been in much better shape.

Even in 2022, the league was still borrowing from the future to flatten out the cap growth curve.

But now, the Packers are free of $60M in dead money AND the rate of cap increases is growing like crazy. If you look at the link below from OTC - they are conservatively predicting cap growth as:

2024 - $242M ( + $18M) (edit:  now 255M !)
2025 - $260M  (+ $18M)
2026 - $284M  (+ $24M)
2027 - $314M  (+ $30M)

https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space

New TV deals are hitting, gambling is lucrative, streaming is raking in the cashish.
So when you see the exorbitant amounts handed out during 2024 FA - just remember, the agents have seen all the spreadsheets & cap growth predictions too.

Here's a value chart showing when players have their greatest value :
Age vs paychecks vs production.

It definitely a young man's game and the Packers roster is super loaded with high- value players from the last 3 drafts ( 33 selections )

.
So when you look at the graphic above, it paints a rosy picture from the cap side of the coin, but those are just numbers on a page. How about some names ?
Who are the players that are making the leap in production from Year 1 - 2 and Year 2- 3 on those cheeep contracts ?

Gute has hit both sides of the team with the current youth movement - some notable leapers below. (Defense could use a little boost in 2024)

All of these guys are entering a leap year, in a leap year.

Defense

Karl Brooks
Colby Wooden
Brenton Cox Jr
Anthony Johnson and Anthony Johnson Jr
Carrington Valentine
Quay Walker
Kingsley Enagbare
Jonathan Ford
Devonte Wyatt

Offense

Tucker Kraft
Luke Musgrave
Ben Sims
Jayden Reed
Bo Melton
Malik Heath
Christian Watson
Dontayvion Wicks
Emanuel Wilson
Bo Melton
Romeo Dobbs
Caleb Jones
Sean Rhyan
Zach Tom
Rasheed Walker

Anders Carlson
Daniel Whelan
Sean Clifford

Using 4 years as a baseline, that chart also reflects when young players are getting their first extensions/new contracts.
Some may come a year earlier, some maybe not until their 5th year, but cashing in when they are 24-26 years old is the sweet spot.

Better win it all before that 2023 class comes due.  Won't be able to keep everybody.

Franchise Tag numbers for 2024

For reference, the salary cap for an entire NFL team was $37 M back in 1995

QB: $38.3M
RB: $11.9M
WR: $21.8M
TE: $12.6M
OL: $20.9M
DT: $22.1M
DE: $21.3M
LB: $24M
CB: $19.8M
S: $17.1M
K/P: $5.9M

Another comparison.

In 1993, Reggie White signed a massive contract. It was for four years and $17 million (total not per year).

I can see some real controversy here. Take WR at $21.8 and TE at $12.6.  Some guys went down this road before.  Take Travis Kelcie, is he a TE that gets open down the field or WR that sometimes blocks close to the line?  Also DE and LB. Is a guy a LB in a 3-4 but a DE in a 4-3?  At least the money is not so much different there.

https://packerswire.usatoday.c...-on-2024-salary-cap/

https://t.co/3GJMh96wJk pic.twitter.com/ASUvX73e2Z

— Aaron Nagler (@AaronNagler) February 27, 2024

From Andrew Brandt this morning, talking about the Saints method of cap management

" It doesn’t take a cap wizard to move cap to future years.
It takes a cap wizard to put the team in position to not have to do that."

i read yesterday that reworking Garys contract put the Packers 8 million over the cap. Is that before the new 255 million dollar cap is in place? And with Bachtiaris gigantuan number. May be able to keep him after all especially if he re works his.

Under?

Yeah, must be under. They were about $2 mil under before this.

Anyone care to summarize the current "Cap Space Available" as of today? If I'm reading correctly, Spotrac has the Packers at approx. $27 million of Cap Space.  And OverTheCap has the Packers at approx. $26 million, basically the same. I assume these numbers are not including the Draft pool of approx. $12 million.

So is the current Cap space sitting at approx. $14 million?

Spotrac

OverTheCap

I think so..... Basically you need a minimum of 20 million in cap space so that you can do business draft. Sign players on one year deals, undrafted free agents, etc.

Bill Huber's Take on Current Cap Situation

I think this article does a pretty good job of answering some questions/give commentary.

-currently with $25 million of cap space

-balloons to about $35 million after June 1 cuts (Campbell, etc.)

-Holes at MLB and SS/FS and O-line backups

-Love's impending extension

-Unused cap space carries over to next year; next year's unused carries over to 2026, etc.

-2022 draft class looks like it'll cost some serious $$$$

GB in good enough shape that they paid out roster bonuses to Elton Jenkins, Jaime Alexander, and Preston Smith and did not convert them into signing bonuses.  The benefit is not extending years and cap hits down the road.  

Here's a link to a cool page at OTC -  they show how much each of the 2024 draft picks will earn. Just click on slot 25 for example and you'll see that lucky guy not only gets to play for The Mighty Green Bay Packers...he will also take home $15.7M in cash & fabulous prizes with nearly half of it in an immediate signing bonus.

https://overthecap.com/draft

Packers will have a rookie pool of $13.2M to sign 11 picks, but only need $4.5M* in available cap space to ink all of them.

* each rookie knocks another player ($$) off the roster

@PA green & gold posted:

GB in good enough shape that they paid out roster bonuses to Elton Jenkins, Jaime Alexander, and Preston Smith and did not convert them into signing bonuses.  The benefit is not extending years and cap hits down the road.  

Our cap is finally recovering from the Aaron Rodgers years.

…and it’s about to get assaulted by the Love years.   It’s going to be interesting to see who gets kept as the young producers start to reach contract 2.

Love won’t assault that salary cap for a few years. The contract he’s about to sign will be large, but cap “friendly” for the next 3 to 4 years.

Salary cap growth by offensive position from Jason at OTC

"Here is the growth in the average of the top five at each position on offense from 2014 to 2023. Definitely outpacing the cap on offense with some explosive growth at right tackle and QB.  RB and C were the two positions suffering*"

https://twitter.com/Jason_OTC/.../1766127184337363191

*Those poor aggrieved bastards - their paychecks only went up 54 % and 74 % respectively.

How much cap does each NFL team have invested in " void years" ?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJymoLeXAAAbJ8S.png:large

( sorry, don't know how to embed that graphic)

Eagles, Browns, Jets and Saints are leveraged to the hilt, with 49ers right behind them

Packers are perfectly average, coming in at # 15 in void year cap hits

The other number shown is a teams' SB odds so you can see what all that leverage has done to their play on the field. Teams spend big and make a run, just like GB did in 2020-2022.

Then you eat the dead cap/void years and start all over again. Unless you're remarkably stupid like the Saints who are fucked for a few more seasons.

"The Packers received insurance policy proceeds for David Bakhtiari & Jaire Alexander who both missed significant time in 2023.
Total salary cap benefit for 2024 is $1.4M, and another $0.5M in each 2025 & 2026."

@Satori posted:

"The Packers received insurance policy proceeds for David Bakhtiari & Jaire Alexander who both missed significant time in 2023.
Total salary cap benefit for 2024 is $1.4M, and another $0.5M in each 2025 & 2026."

Didn't know you could a) get insurance money for a guy who did play (JA), or b) it brought cap relief.

@Satori posted:

( sorry, don't know how to embed that graphic)

I got ya brother.

Eagles have voided more than a years worth of cap space.

@Fandame posted:

Didn't know you could a) get insurance money for a guy who did play (JA), or b) it brought cap relief.

I know! When I found out about this....I was like...."what sorcery is this?!?!" Russ BallZ gaming the system.  💪🏼🙂

No wonder why GB isn't afraid to draft guys with an injury history! 

Well done Russ! I hope you were also smart enough to go to the General and save some time.

Don't be a cave man, go with the Flo.

@antooo posted:

Don't be a cave man, go with the Flo.