Accounting Handles 30 Percent of Packers’ Cap Problem

The Packers converted David Bakhtiari’s roster bonus into signing bonus to create $8.304 million of salary-cap relief.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers dug themselves out of almost one-third of their salary-cap hole this week by restructuring All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari’s contract.

In nothing more than an accounting move, the Packers converted Bakhtiari’s $11.072 roster bonus into signing bonus, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. By doing so, that money was spread over the 2021 through 2024 salary caps and created $8.304 million of cap space for 2021 at the expense of adding $2.768 million to his already-lofty cap charges in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Just like that, the Packers went from about $28.19 million over the cap to $19.89 million over the cap, according to OverTheCap.com. That took care of 29.4 percent of the deficit.

Regardless of the speculation over the signing of former All-Pro and Wisconsin native J.J. Watt, it was a necessary move to get beneath the salary cap for the start of the league-year on March 17.

Due to COVID-19 and its bite out of the league’s giant economic pie, the cap is expected to fall from $198.2 million in 2019 to perhaps $180.5 million in 2020. It’s not just the potential decrease of $17.7 million, it’s that it’s not the annual increase of $10-plus million that teams had become accustomed to building into their football budgets.

A restructured contract for MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers, which would turn roster bonus and salary into signing bonus to decrease his $37.2 million cap hit, and a contract extension for receiver Davante Adams, which would reduce the $16.8 million cap hit stemming from a $12.25 million base salary, could take care of most of the heavy lifting to get to the cap.

Bakhtiari is coming off an All-Pro season despite missing the end of the year with a torn ACL. Pro Football Focus charged him with one sack and nine total pressures compared to two sacks and 37 total pressures in 2019. For more of an apples-to-apples comparison, Bakhtiari allowed a pressure on 2.02 percent of passing plays this season compared to 4.86 percent last year.