Packers’ Top-Heavy Salary Structure Isn’t Unique

The Green Bay Packers are paying a lot of money to a handful of star players.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers showed Jaire Alexander the money.

They’ve shown a lot of people the money.

In terms of average annual salary:

- Aaron Rodgers’ average of $50.3 million is No. 1 among quarterbacks, with Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson a distant second at $46 million.

- David Bakhtiari’s average of $23 million is No. 2 among offensive linemen, a mere $10,000 less than San Francisco’s Trent Williams.

- Alexander’s average of $21 million is No. 1 among cornerbacks, just ahead of Cleveland’s Denzel Ward ($20.1 million) and the previous champion, the Rams’ Jalen Ramsey ($20 million).

In all, the Packers have seven players making at least $10 million per season, with defensive tackle Kenny Clark ($17.5 million), outside linebacker Preston Smith ($13 million), running back Aaron Jones ($12 million) and inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell ($10 million) being the others.

And more could be on the way. In 2023, outside linebacker Rashan Gary is set to play under the fifth-year option of about $10.9 million; a contract extension that will blow that number out of the water seems a certainty. Offensive lineman Elgton Jenkins and safety Adrian Amos, two of the top players at their position groups, are entering their final season under contract. And safety Darnell Savage could be in line for an extension, too.

The idea of this story was to point out the top-heavy nature of the Packers’ salary structure. Here’s the thing, though: It’s not really unique.

Ten teams have more $10 million-per-season players than Green Bay. Five more teams match the Packers’ total of seven.

At SI Sportsbook, 13 teams have championship odds of +2000 or shorter. They average 6.8 players with $10 million averages.

Cleveland, Philadelphia and Tampa Bay have 10 each, with the Buccaneers boasting five players with averages of at least $15 million. The Chargers have only six but four of those players are averaging at least $20 million. The Raiders have only five but they’re all averaging at least $17 million.

As an executive for a fellow Super Bowl contender said when asked about the haves-and-have-nots trend, great players win football games and, therefore, get paid a lot of money. Great players are hard to replace. Everybody else is expendable. The key is to make the right decisions with who gets the big slices of the salary-cap pie, hope the Injury Gods smile on the big-budget players, hit on draft picks and strike gold with lower-tier free agents, like the Packers did last year with De’Vondre Campbell and Rasul Douglas.

Cap dollars and total dollars aren’t the same. Because of how their deals are structured, the cap figures for Rodgers ($28.53 million), Bakhtiari ($13.42 million), Clark ($9.98 million) and Alexander ($7.08 million) are considerably less than their annual averages. Still, it seems interesting to note that 12 players are consuming about 50.4 percent of the salary cap, according to OverTheCap.com.

Next year is where it will get messy. The Packers will have seven players with cap charges of greater than $10 million in 2023. Rodgers ($31.62 million), Bakhtiari ($29.07 million), Clark ($23.97 million), Jones ($20.01 million), Alexander ($20 million), Smith ($13.04 million) and Gary ($10.89 million) will gobble up about $148.6 million of the cap. If the cap rises from $208.2 million to $225 million, those seven players will devour 66.0 percent of the cap.

Some decisions will be easy (restructuring the roster bonuses of Alexander and Bakhtiari, for instance). Others will be difficult (potentially releasing Jones). Regardless of the path, it’s the price of doing business when you’ve assembled a talented, veteran roster.