Here Comes The Ugly: Packers Restructure Bakhtiari's Contract

In a widely anticipated maneuver, the Packers restructured David Bakhtiari’s contract to reduce his cap number by $9.264 million.  They reduced his base salary to the minimum (from $3.2M to $1.12M) and converted all of his $9.5M roster bonus while adding two void years.  The total amount converted was $11.58M over 5 years. 

The Packers left his $700K workout bonus alone, and did nothing with his $600K game active bonus, probably because he only played one game last year so only $35,294 counts against the cap as likely-to-be-earned.  Note that when Bakhtiari plays his second game and every game after that, the Packers cap space will be reduced by that $35,294 figure immediately, not after the season.

Bakhtiari’s new cap number will be $12.939M.  The restructure kicks $9.264M into the out years of the contract and will add $2.316M to his cap numbers in 2023.  Last year, the Packers converted Bakhtiari’s $11.072M roster bonus to a signing bonus to free up $8.304M while adding $2.768M to his cap numbers in 2021 through 2024.  The Packers did not add any void years to his deal last year. 

Bakhtiari’s original contract looked like this:

Bakhtiairi’s contract after two restructures that converted $22.57M and kicked $17.568M into the out years of the contract looks like this now:

His dead money is now $37.88M, so he cannot be traded or released.  Should the Packers desire to trade or release Bakhtiari in 2023, there would be less than $2M in cap relief if executed prior to the payment of his $9.5M roster bonus.

So far, the Packers have restructured the contracts of Kenny Clark, Aaron Jones, and David Bakhtiari.  Here is a tracker:

The underlined number is the one I am keeping an eye on.  It would be nice if the cap for 2023 increases by more than the underlined number, which is the amount of cap the Packers pushed into the 2023 year so far.  These restructures might not mean the release of current Packer players, though Aaron Jones is set up to be a cap casualty in 2023, but the moves that do not get made due to lack of cap space, or even the Packers shopping in a less expensive area of the market.

Losing any players in 2023 will be quite visible, but the moves that don’t get made or the Unrestricted Free Agents from other teams who are not pursued due to a lack of cap space will be impossible to quantify or identify.  I have seen estimates suggesting that the cap will increase in 2023 by anywhere from $12M to $20M.  It looks like the moves the Packers make in the next three weeks will eat all of that increase and more.