Za'Darius Smith is the fifth player to restructure his contract with the Packers this offseason. Here are the details, per ESPN's Field Yates: They converted his $5 million roster bonus and $9.76 million of his $10.75 million base salary into a signing bonus. That created $7.38 million in cap space. It also means his cap number for 2022, the last year of his deal, jumps to $28.06 million. They will likely have to do an extension at that point.

Preston Smith's renegotiated contract finally has been filed. His new cap number for 2021 is $8.75 million (down from $16M). He received a $6.5M signing bonus but his base salary lowered from $6.85M to $1M. His 2022 cap number jumps to $19.75M from $16.5M. The Packers would still save $12.25M on '22 cap if they cut after '21. It would likely come next March given that he now has a $3M roster bonus due on the third day of the '22 league year. Previously there was no March '22 bonus in his deal.

Here's the official restructuring of Adrian Amos and Billy Turner contracts: Packers converted $4.45M of Turner's roster bonus & base to a signing bonus, lowering his cap # from $8.4M to $4,827,500. His base went from $4.525M to $1.075M. His '22 cap number increased by about $800K to $8.99M and they added a year ('23) for cap purposes that automatically voids. They converted Amos' $1.5M RB into a SB, lowering his cap number from $10.3M to $9.55M. His '22 cap number went from $10.9M to $11.65M.

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A few days ago I heard that teams do not have to get approval from the player/agent to move the salary around. I found it interesting. Perhaps someone like Aaron they would see if he approves of the adjustment or not but someone like Turner has not voice in the matter.

Originally Posted by: wpr 

That’s quite a surprise. You would think they would have to get the ok from them.

Originally Posted by: Cheesey 

The contract language says the players gave them the okay to do it, when they signed said contract.

Often times it simple allows teams to term roster bonuses, base salary or other money into signing bonuses which are immediately paid.

In other words, it's simply taking future money (possibile future nonguaranteed money) and paying it now and putting it in said players bank account, for nothing. Why would any player or agent disagree with this?

You might be asking how this benefits the team. Well, under the NFL accounting system for the cap, signing bonus money is spread over the life of the players contract, (or 5 years, whichever is shorter).


So it's a win-win, as the teams get more cap space now (but less cap later), and players get more money now.

Originally Posted by: beast 

The Green Bay Packers have restructured veteran kicker Mason Crosby’s contract, adding three void years to help create badly needed salary-cap space.

According to a source, that pushed Crosby’s 2021 cap number down from $4.5 million to $3.16 million. It was accomplished by reducing his base salary of $1.5 million to the league-minimum $1.075 million and eliminating a $1.25 million roster bonus. The restructure didn’t change Crosby’s cash flow; it merely changed the accounting.

To create the cap space for the upcoming season, which will help handle the re-signing on Kevin King, it turned the $425,000 of reduced base salary and the aforementioned roster bonus into $1.675 million of prorated signing bonus. That amount is spread in $335,000 installments over the 2021 and 2022 caps – his final two years under contract – and the three voided seasons.

That means the price of creating $1.34 million of cap space for 2021 is having a dead-money hit of $1.005 million on the 2023 cap when Crosby is no longer on the team. (That is the $335,000 proration multiplied by the three seasons).

The cap should really really boom in 2023... though as far as competing that won't really help the Packers as it's going to help all teams equally and Packers will still have among the least available cap space.

At some point the Packers are either going to damage themselves by over spending or they're going to need to back off and reload for a year or two, save up some cap space.

Probably the best two times would be NOW (which didn't happen), or in 2023, would be a great year to do it... let all the other teams over spend in FA and burn that mega huge increase, while being smart and savings for the following years.

I don't think Gute is doing that, as I think he's just over spending and we're going to get tight cap again...

Originally Posted by: beast