A week ago, it looked like Green Bay Packers Executive Vice President of Football Operations Russ Ball was sitting squarely behind the eight ball with NFL free agency at hand. That’s when Ball’s hands started massaging the team’s salary structure to get them from a point well above the league’s 182.5 million dollar salary cap to within a million or two of the cap.
Those moves were like dominoes that tumbled toward today’s biggest announcement on the eve of free agency, the Packers and running back Aaron Jones came to terms on a four year, 48 million dollar extension.
First the team cut veterans Christian Kirksey and Rick Wagner.
They restructured a portion of David Bakhtiari’s massive contract extension to clear cap space.
Tight end John L0vett was released.
Key veterans agreed to moving some money around. Safety Adrian Amos’s negotiation saved about $750,000.00. Billy Turner converted a million dollar roster bonus into a signing bonus and also moved some of his base salary into a signing bonus.
Preston Smith had the most surgery done on his contract. Facing about a 16 million dollar cap hit for 2021, the Packers cut the cap figure to about 8.25 million by loading Smith’s deal with sack incentives that won’t count against this year’s cap. Escalators kick in starting with 6 sacks (he had just four last year after a dozen in 2019), all the way to 14 where he would recoup 4.4 million in earnings.
All of that money movement paved the way for the block bluster Jones deal even after the Packers declined to apply the franchise tag on one of the team’s key offensive playmakers.
Jones changed agents late last year, signing Drew Rosenhaus to handle the negotiations. In announcing the contract, Rosenhaus said Aaron could have probably earned more on the open market but he was intent on staying in Green Bay where he’s piled up 35 touchdowns over his last 34 games.
The work is far from done.
Restructuring Aaron Rodgers, Za’Darius Smith, extending Davante Adams long term and maybe another fringe veteran or two getting released could allow Ball to squeeze a few more dollars for the NFL shopping spree that begins in earnest this week.
