Good News: Packers Can Create a Lot of Cap Space; Now, the Bad News

The Green Bay Packers, who are over the salary cap, can create additional cap space with simple restructures.

Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The bad news is the Green Bay Packers are over the cap to start the offseason. The good news is the Packers have plenty of ways to be under it in time for the start of the new league-year next month.

There are big-ticket items, such as the presumptive release of Elgton Jenkins, which would create more than $19.5 million.

There are other levers that general manager Brian Gutekunst can pull if he needs to create cap space to build upon a roster that has reached the playoffs the last three years but went one-and-done the last two. One way is through simple contract restructures. That is done through the waving of a magic wand. A base salary can be cut to the league minimum, with the rest turned into a signing bonus over the remaining life of the contract. The player gets the same amount of money, the team gets the cap space – no negotiation required.

It’s a win-win. (Well, not really. It’s the credit-card approach to building a roster. There is short-term gain, such as whipping out the Visa to get that new flat-screen TV, but long-term pain, when the interest on the credit card is due.)

According to OverTheCap.com, the Packers can create $52 million of cap space through those simple restructures. General manager Brian Gutekunst could use that money to sign center Tyler Linderbaum, for instance.

So, that’s the good news.

Packers Have Some Cap Flexibility

The bad news is shown in this graphic of league-wide restructure potential.

How much cap space could each NFL team free up with simple restructures?

1. DAL $131M
2. DET $128M
3. KC $109M
...
32. PHI $0.2M 😅

Data: @Jason_OTC (02/11/2026)
A simple restructure converts payments into prorated signing bonuses spread over the remaining years of the… pic.twitter.com/knNG9kAbzB

— SFdata9ers🏈📊 (@sfdata9ers) February 11, 2026

Green Bay will be able to create the eighth-fewest salary-cap dollars through simple restructures. So, yes, there is money the Packers can borrow easily from future salary caps. It’s just not as much as other teams can borrow.

The league median is about $62.0 million. The Lions, Vikings and Bears, all of whom are further over the cap than the Packers, can also borrow more money to improve their rosters. The Lions can create $128.0 million – second-most in the league and more than double Green Bay’s restructure potential.

So, while Green Bay can get to about $48.8 million under the cap, the Lions can get to $114.8 million, the Bears to $76.4 million and the Vikings to $59.1 million.

“I feel really good again,” Gutekunst said last week. “You know, a lot of that will be dependent on the decisions we make with the roster right now and what we do. But I believe we have all the flexibility to do what we need to do.”

Borrowing against future salary caps will make it harder to keep future rosters together, let alone add to those rosters in free agency. Players who will be playing the 2026 season on expiring contracts include tight end Tucker Kraft, receivers Christian Watson and Jayden Reed, and defensive linemen Devonte Wyatt and Lukas Van Ness.

To that point, Gutekunst continued: “We also have a bunch of young players – really good players – that we would like to keep around here for a while, so we’ll work through that. But I feel good about our flexibility. I think the last few years, Russ (Ball) has done such a good job of keeping us at a point where, if opportunities present themselves, we’re never not able to do those things. Like Micah last year, you know what I mean? So, I feel really good about it.”

No Such Thing as Free Lunch

Two key decisions that Gutekunst will have to make in the coming weeks are centered on last year’s two big free-agent signings, guard Aaron Banks and cornerback Nate Hobbs.

Neither Banks, who signed a four-year, $77 million contract, nor Hobbs, who signed a four-year, $48 million contract, performed up to expectations. In 2026, Banks is owed a base salary of $7.7 million and a roster bonus of $9.5 million and has a cap charge of $24.85 million. Hobbs is owed a $1.8 million base salary and a $6.25 million roster bonus and has a cap charge of more than $12.8 million.

What would a simple restructure of Banks’ contract look like? With Ken Ingalls crunching the numbers, that $17.2 million of salary and roster bonus would become a minimum base salary of $1.215 million. His cap charges would go from $24.85 million in 2026, $22.25 million in 2027 and $20.75 million in 2028 to about $14.19 million in 2026, $27.58 million in 2027 and $26.1 million in 2028. 

That would mean almost $10.66 million of added cap space in 2026, with the difference made up over the next couple years. So, no, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Throw in a couple void years, and his 2026 cap charge would fall to about $12.06 million but result in a dead-money charge of almost $6.4 million in 2029.

Restructuring those contracts would create cap space, but it’s risky business to kick the financial can down the road on underperforming veterans with hefty contracts.

Gutekunst has been good with his big free-agent signings but didn’t get nearly the desired return on investment on last year’s signings. Injuries were an issue for both players and especially for Hobbs, who was sidelined three times by knee injuries.

“Aaron Banks, he really hasn’t missed much time in his career,” Gutekunst said. “Some of the things he went through were unexpected. I really thought he played well toward the end of the season once he got healthy. And then obviously with Hobbs, he’d had a little bit of things, certainly not as much as he had this past year.

“Those are always risks you take whenever you get into the free agency pool. Most all these guys have had stuff. If you’ve played four or five years in the National Football League, you’re going to have some things (and) you’ve got to take some risk on, and we did. It didn’t work out this year, particularly with Hobbs, but we’ll see how it goes in the next year.”

Not all ways of creating cap space involve the credit card. Defensive tackle Devonte Wyatt will play the 2026 season under the fifth-year option of $12.938 million. A contract extension would take a bite out of that number and ensure the team’s most impactful interior defender will remain with the team for the long haul.

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