Packers Sign Amari Rodgers

The Packers reached an agreement with Amari Rodgers on a four-year, rookie deal worth a total of $4.899 million.  Rodgers is the last of the Packers’ draft picks to sign a contract.  Rodgers will have a cap number of $890,891 for 2021.  I previously projected his cap number at $897,550.  His deal looks like this:

The only guaranteed money is the signing bonus, which totals $923,524.  The Packers do like their workout bonuses, and managed to insert a total of $120,000 for that purpose.  Workout bonuses are deemed likely to be earned for cap purposes because it is within the player’s sole control whether he earns the bonus, as long as he is still on the roster.  Still, it is not the same as money guaranteed in a signing bonus, so agents usually resist them for premium picks.  The Packers were unable to insert workout bonuses in the contracts of Josh Myers or Eric Stokes and did not use them in their day three picks.   

The contract might and probably does contain a split salary in case of injury.  The Packers inserted a split salary into the contracts of Josiah Deguara and Simon Stepaniak last year.  In Deguara’s case, the Packers paid him for the first two weeks at the normal rookie minimum and then paid the remaining weeks based on a $450,000 base salary.  Ditto for Stepaniak.  Both players received their full signing bonuses.  

Now that all of the Packers’ draft picks have signed, we can determine how much cap space was needed to sign them under the Rule of 51.  The player with the 51st-highest cap number at present is Vernon Scott with a $800,922 charge.  Any cap numbers below that number would not count against the cap.  

Royce Newman has a first year cap number of $784,836.  Signing him and the other day three picks did not cost the Packers any cap space.  Stokes at $2.168 million (minus roughly $801K) decreased the team’s cap space by $1.367 million.  Signing Josh Myers for $1.014M decreased the space by $213K and Rodgers decreased it by $90K.  So, signing the draft class reduced the Packers’ cap space by about $1.67 million.

The Packers have almost $4.9M in cap space at present.  The 52nd and 53rd contracts will cost at least $1.32M ($660K times two) but those last two players could be players with higher cap numbers such as two players making $780K each for a total of $1.56M.  I would budget $1.4M for the last two players and $3.168M (which is the absolute minimum) for the practice squad.  That totals roughly $4.6M, leaving the Packers a few hundred thousand dollars under the cap limit.  That will not be enough to get through the season.  The first player the packers put on PUP or IR during the regular season (if such a player had no game active bonus – which is most players) would put the Packers in the red.

The Packers probably need to generate at least $3M in cap space, and $5M more would not be amiss.  The team can realize some savings depending on the players they choose to cut in September.  That should depend on performance in training camp, which mercifully starts in a few days.