The CBA is up after the 2020 season.
There is a real possibility that there will be an uncapped season in 2021.
Meaning The Packers could choose to redo many of the big contracts paying what is owed in signing bonuses then extending them with a much lower cap number moving ahead.
The Packers did just that after the 2010 season ended and the 2011 season was an uncapped year.
Something to think about as Gutey extends his players and signs other FA.
Nevermind searching, I found this.
The Uncapped Year
With a large portion of news coming from Giants owner John Mara, this sub has seen a lot of back and forth between Redskins fans and Giants fans about the uncapped year in 2010. It usually devolves into Redskins fans calling Mara a piece of shit and Giants fans overusing variations of "salt." So, I decided to try and find out what really happened in 2010.
The short end of it is that the uncapped year in 2010 was the result of the owners' unanimous decision to void the old CBA in favor of constructing a new one. A new agreement could not be reached by 2010, so the year was left uncapped.
An uncapped year would have provided a great place to dump salaries or signing bonuses for teams with deeper pockets, but the owners agreed to maintain the original cap in order to preserve parity. It was later reported that ownership level meetings included up to 6 warnings that "serious consequences" would be levied against teams trying to dump money into the uncapped year. These warnings were heeded by 26 teams who stayed under the cap. 4 teams went slightly over the cap with 1 year contracts and cuts (JaMarcus Russell in Oakland). Only 2 teams went significantly over the cap with multi-year contracts. These 2 teams were the Cowboys and Redskins by 10 million and 36 million, respectively. The Cowboys strayed from their usual practice of using prorated signing bonuses to conserve cap space and gave Miles Austin a 17 million dollar salary for the 2010 season. By 2011, this number would drop to 8.5 million of which 7.855 million would be a signing bonus. This put the Cowboys 10 million over the cap in 2010. At the same time, the Redskins approach was a bit more bold. While restructured contracts are usually used to push back cap hits in order to free up space, the Redskins restructured Albert Haynesworth and DeAngelo Hall in order to dump a large portion, 21 million for Haynesworth and 15 million for Hall, of their contractual dues into 2010. This move took the Redskins from a standard 140 million dollar cap hit in 2010 to over 170 million.
The league did not hand out punishments in 2011. Instead, it waited until 2012 under the new CBA to penalize the Cowboys and Redskins exactly the amount that they went over the "cap" by in 2010. In order to maintain the total league cap space, 46 million dollars was distributed evenly to the other 28 teams in the league (the Saints and Raiders were excluded as part of minor penalties). Mara, the chairman of the Management council, was the one to deliver the news, and his remarks that the Redskins were "lucky they didn't lose draft picks" incited a great deal of hatred, which is still prevalent today.
I am a Giants fan so this research is somewhat biased. Also, the league probably retroactively skewed reports to protect itself. It should also be noted that there was no paper trail for the warnings issued. This is one of the key components that many fans point to when talking about how their team did not violate any written rules at the time. So please fill in any pertinent information I left out, because this sub really needs a good source of what actually happened in 2010.
There was an uncapped year.
Owners agreed not to abuse it.
Except Dallas and Washington.
I was addicted to The Hokey Pokey, but I turned myself around!