Finally out from the financial shadow of the Aaron Rodgers era and with a young, mostly cheap roster constructed, Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst likes where his team is at from a salary cap standpoint entering the 2025 offseason.
The Packers have the cap space and flexibility to retain free agents, re-sign young players and aggressively target veterans this offseason.
“I feel really good about our ability to go do what we need to do to field a championship-level team,” Gutekunst said Thursday. “The opportunities out there are unknown right now, we’ll see how that goes, but we’re in a better situation than we have been over the past 2-3 years.”
Gutekunst and Russ Ball did a quick and effective renovation on the salary cap during the transition from the Rodgers era to the Jordan Love era at quarterback.
“Russ does a fantastic job with our cap,” Gutekunst said. “All the decisions we’ve made over the past few years have put us in a position where we’re in pretty good shape right now. Again, have to keep making good decisions…we have a lot of good players under rookie contracts right now. We have to make sure we can extend those guys when that time comes.”
According to Over the Cap, the Packers are at roughly $50 million in cap space and a little over $38 million in effective cap space as of mid-January. The dead money from trading Rodgers and transitioning away from several veteran players is mostly gone from the cap, freeing Gutekunst from needing to do a bunch of salary conversions and cap tricks to create operating room financially this offseason.
Gutekunst said he’d like to be in this situation — with cap flexibility to do different things — every offseason instead of borrowing from the future like was necessary through the COVID challenges and trying to keep a veteran roster around Rodgers, but he won’t avoid the situation if borrowing from the future is required to add elite, high-end players in unique situations.
Gutekunst made it clear that players like Josh Jacobs and Xavier McKinney — two free-agent signings who made the Pro Bowl in Year 1 in Green Bay — don’t come around often. And when they are available, he wants the Packers to be aggressive in getting them regardless of cap situation.
“I feel like I approach every offseason like I have to attack it aggressively,” Gutekunst said. “We’ll see what transpires through the free agency class, who gets re-signs, who doesn’t, salary cap causalities. If it’s right for us, we’re going to attack it.”
Entering Year 3 with Love as the starting quarterback, Gutekunst said it’s “time” for this group of Packers to start competing for championships. After creating valuable flexibility with the salary cap over the past few seasons, Gutekunst now has an opportunity to go add a few pieces that could help the Packers get over the hump from good to great in 2025.