GREEN BAY — Like roughly half the NFL, the Green Bay Packers know they have their work cut out for themselves with the salary cap shrinking, impending free agents they’d like to keep and roster needs to fill despite the fiscal restrictions created by the league’s COVID-19 pandemic-related financial losses.

So whether it’s restructuring — or, perhaps, extending — three-time NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ contract, reworking the contracts of other prominent players or reluctantly cutting ties with players who’d otherwise be on the roster if not for the reduced salary cap, coach Matt LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst both acknowledged a flurry of moves are coming in the next two weeks before the new league year begins on March 17.

“It certainly is a challenge. It’s a challenge for all of us,” LaFleur said during a Zoom call with reporters earlier this week. “There’s going to be tough decisions that need to be made. (But) you’ve got to move forward and you’ve got to make the best decisions that you feel are right for the Green Bay Packers. It’s going to be important that we continue to develop a lot of our younger guys, because there are going to be some voids that potentially could be left there. And the best way to alleviate those voids is to develop your younger guys.”

Added Gutekunst: “There’s going to be some things we have to do between now and the time we get to playing ball to keep it under the cap. We have a lot of moves to make still. … I think we will work with our players to do what we need to do.”

Despite having already restructured All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtiari’s contract to clear $8.3 million in cap space, the Packers still have to create a smidge more than $11 million in cap space to reach the projected cap of $180.5 million, according to OverTheCap.com. There have been reports the cap will be higher than that, though it could settle around $185 million — or roughly $13 million less than it was for the 2020 season, set before the pandemic hit.

With a host of crucial players headed into free agency (All-Pro center Corey Linsley and Pro Bowl running back Aaron Jones among them) and Rodgers’ onerous cap number ($37.6 million) needing adjustment, Gutekunst told the media nothing is off the table as the team seeks the maneuverability necessary to retain or add players.

That could mean extending Rodgers’ contract beyond 2023, when it’s set to expire after the four-year, $134 million extension he signed in August 2018, when he had two years remaining on his existing deal.

According to a source, the team approached Rodgers around the time of the team’s Jan. 24 season-ending loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC Championship Game about altering his contract to free up cap space. After that game, Rodgers notably mused about his own uncertain future with the team, and multiple sources said at the time Rodgers was merely seeking a longer-term commitment to him as the quarterback in the wake of last year’s first-round selection of Jordan Love in the NFL draft.

Extending the 37-year-old Rodgers’ contract, then, would do two things: tie the team to its star quarterback for a longer period of time — as Rodgers’ current contract is structured, the Packers could move on from him after the 2021 season and save themselves more than $22 million in salary cap space — while also creating much-needed 2021 cap room.

Asked directly if he has talked with Rodgers about restructuring his contract, Gutekunst replied: “With all of our players, I keep whatever conversations we have confidential. But I will say we’ve reached out to a number of players — obviously David Bakhtiari being one who we’ve already gone down that route with him — working with those guys to kind of find solutions to this cap issue. I’m appreciative of those guys. I think everybody wants to try to put the best football team out there in ‘21 that we can.”

Asked later if he’d be willing to extend the contract of a player with more than one year left on his deal, Gutekunst replied: “That’s a good question. I don’t think there’s ever a precedent you cannot set. I will say in these times, they are unusual and unique. If we decided to do something like that, it would be because of the uniqueness of this year. I don’t foresee us going down that route, but we would never close the door on something that we think could really help us as a football team moving forward.”

One thing the Packers could do to really help themselves would be to extend the contract of All-Pro wide receiver Davante Adams, who in 2020 set the franchise single-season record for receptions (115), tied the franchise single-season record for touchdown catches (18) and led the NFL in receiving yards per game (98.1). Adams missed two games early in the year with a hamstring injury, leaving him with 1,374 receiving yards on the year — 12 fewer than his career high of 1,386 set in 2018, and 145 shy of Jordy Nelson’s single-season franchise record of 1,519 set in 2014.

Adams is entering the final year of the four-year, $58 million extension he signed in December 2017, and with a $16.8 million cap number for 2021, a new long-term deal would lower that number significantly while pushing money into future years, when the league’s expected new, lucrative TV contracts will kick in.

“He’s obviously an extremely core part of our team, and he’s such an important part of what we’re doing on offense,” Gutekunst said of Adams. “Watching him grow into the leader he’s become for our entire team, he’s very, very important. And I think he obviously had an incredible year. I think he’s just at the top of his game — not only physically, but just the way he sees the game. He’s one of the best in the league right now.

“We’ll kind of work toward (an extension), as all these things come together with the different things we’re going to have to do. But that’s certainly an option.”

Historically, the Packers have been reluctant to kick the financial can down the road, fearing that pushing money into the future would eventually put them in such an untenable salary cap position that they’d have to endure a wasted season while shedding burdensome contracts. But with TV revenues expected to double and Gutekunst acknowledging the league’s pandemic-related losses may not only limit this year’s cap but next year’s as well, desperate times call for somewhat more desperate accounting measures.

“We’re going to do that this year quite a bit — push money out to give us our best chance to win in ’21,” Gutekunst said. “We have a really good football team. I think the core of our football team is going to be really strong the next few years, and we want to give ourselves every chance to compete for championships within that time. I don’t know if there’s less risk (because of the impending TV deals). I just think we’ve seen some examples as of late of ways to do it a little differently.

“Sometimes you can’t avoid it. It’s just kind of the cost of doing business at times. You want to try and avoid that at all costs if you can, but it doesn’t always work out that way.”

That said, Gutekunst said the team must also keep in mind that borrowing against future years can still be a dangerous approach.

“While we have our eyes on ’21 and that’s what’s most important, ’22 and ’23 are factors as well,” Gutekunst said. “As we move through it, I think we’ll make the room we need to, to do the things we want to do. If we get to a certain point and player becomes available that we weren’t expecting or will require us to make more room, we’ll go down that route. But at the same time, there’s some danger in pushing everything into ’22 or ’23.”

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Jason Wilde wrote: