Acme Packing Company
For better or worse, this weekend’s decision frees up significant financial flexibility for the next two years.
The impending release of Jaire Alexander came as a bit of a surprise to many Green Bay Packers fans after the team and the player had seemed to be working towards a new agreement. However, a look at the salary cap implications of the Packers moving on from Alexander illustrates why the team was willing to stand its ground with the embattled and injury-prone cornerback, even if it meant they got no other compensation in return.
In examining the cap impact of Alexander’s contract and release, the Packers suddenly have a significant amount of added flexibility for the 2026 season, which they will need with a handful of young players ready to get paid as they head towards free agency next offseason.
The Packers signed Alexander to a 4-year contract extension in May of 2022, signing him through the 2026 season. That contract included a $30 million signing bonus and multiple roster bonuses that the Packers elected to convert to signing bonuses in 2023 and 2024. Meanwhile, the 2025 and 2026 seasons were structured for just this possibility — no roster bonuses were included, and all of the cash to be paid in each of those seasons was non-guaranteed, in the form of base salary, workout bonuses, and per-game roster bonuses.
Here are the breakdowns of the remaining years on Alexander’s deal, as reported by Overthecap.com:
Base salary: $16.5 million
Workout bonus: $700k
Per-game roster bonuses: $650k
Amortized signing bonus: $7.5 million
Total salary cap hit: $24.64 million
Base salary: $18.15 million
Workout bonus: $700k
Per-game roster bonuses: $650k
Amortized signing bonus: $7.5 million
Total salary cap hit: $27.02 million
Void year
Amortized signing bonus: $2 million
By releasing Alexander after June 1st, the Packers will only be on the hook for keeping his 2025 signing bonus money (just over $7.5 million) as dead money on the 2025 salary cap. The remaining signing bonus money — a shade more than $9.5 million covering both 2026 and the 2027 void year — will hit the cap next year, in 2026.
As a result, the Packers will reduce their salary cap number by just over $17.1 million this season and approximately $17.5 million next year. That’s a total of $34.6 million in cap space opened up over two years, which will have a massive impact. For the coming 2025 season, the Packers are doing just fine; prior to Alexander’s release, they were carrying roughly $29 million in cap space, and this transaction will put them at around $46 million under the cap.
2026 had been a different story, however. Using a projected $295.5 million base cap number, Overthecap.com had estimated the Packers to be about $10 million over the cap prior to rollover from this year’s unused cap space. Now the team will be around $7.5 million under the projected 2026 cap,...
