Bakhtiari’s Contract Latest Restructured by Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers and former All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari agreed to a revised contract, according to ESPN.com’s Field Yates.

As they’d done previously with Kenny Clark and Aaron Jones, the Packers reduced Bakhtiari’s base salary (previously $3.2 million) to the league minimum and took the difference, along with a $9.5 million roster bonus, and turned it into signing bonus, a source confirmed. That’s a total of $11.58 million.

Bakhtiari’s cap numbers were scheduled to be $22.20 million in 2022, $26.27 million in 2023 and $30.27 million in 2024. Bakhtiari’s cap numbers are $14.48 million for 2022, $30.12 million for 2023 and $34.13 million for 2024.

The upside is the move reduced Bakhtiari’s 2022 cap charge by $7.72 million. That puts them about $32 million over the cap but well on their way to be where they need to be for the start of the league-year on March 16. Releasing Za’Darius Smith and extending Aaron Rodgers, Preston Smith, and Jaire Alexander probably would be enough to get the Packers under the cap but not quite enough to use the franchise tag on Davante Adams.

The downside is Bakhtiari’s cap numbers are bordering on astronomical. The highest cap charges for an offensive tackle, according to OverTheCap.com, are Laremy Tunsil ($26.15 million in 2022 and $26.80 million in 2023) and Trent Williams ($26.27 million in 2023 and $26.92 million in 2024). So, Bakhtiari blows those out of the water and is in the neighborhood of franchise quarterbacks. In fact, in 2024, only five quarterbacks are slated to have a higher cap charge than Bakhtiari.

Given the tremendous financial commitment, it’s imperative that Bakhtiari is healthy and returns to form after missing almost all of last season with the ACL tear sustained on Dec. 31, 2020. Had Bakhtiari been healthy, there’s a good chance the Packers would have defeated the Buccaneers in the 2020 NFC Championship Game and at least gotten to the 2021 title game.

The Packers are optimistic that last year’s problems will be behind him in 2022.

“Obviously, it was a big, big injury that he went through,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said on Wednesday. “The effort he put into coming back and working his tail off, he almost overdid it to a certain extent, he just worked so hard to get back.

“I was so disappointed for him once we got to the playoffs because we went into the Detroit game and got him out there and we had some good weeks of practice leading into that and he played about 28 snaps in the Detroit game and really played well, so was really excited, thinking we were kind of over the hump, didn’t happen. I think it would have been if we would have won that last ballgame, but long-term feel really good about him as our left tackle.”