Acme Packing Company
Alright, now that we’ve finally wrapped our heads around that Micah Parsons is actually a Green Bay Packer, let’s look at his four-year contract extensions with the team, which really acts as a five-year deal because he was already under contract for one season before his trade. For all intents and purposes, this is a new five-year deal, and Parsons’ fifth-year option from his time with the Dallas Cowboys was shredded.
If you want a quick look at the full layout of the deal, here is the table from Spotrac:
Now let’s break down the nitty-gritty here.
Signing bonus
The Packers are known for handing out big signing bonuses, in part because that’s usually the only guaranteed money that they give players on extensions, beyond their first-year salary. In truth, though, Green Bay probably could have gone bigger than the $44 million that they paid to Parsons.
While quarterback Jordan Love has the second-largest signing bonus in the league, Zach Tom has the largest signing bonus among non-Pro Bowl offensive linemen in the NFL and safety Xavier McKinney was only recently surpassed by Kyle Hamilton at the top of his position, Nick Bosa’s $50 million signing bonus on his $34 million average per year contract extension from 2023 actually ranks ahead of Parsons’ $44 million bonus on his $46.5 million average per year deal.
There are other guarantees in this contract, highly unusual for the Packers organization outside of quarterback deals, which is probably one reason why the team probably didn’t feel the need to up the signing bonus number. Of the $45.17 million Parsons will make this year, 97 percent of that will be coming by way of his signing bonus.
Salary
If you just look at the raw salary in Parsons’ deal, he’s going to make $1.17 million in 2025, $2.39 million in 2026, $2.11 million in 2027, $40.55 million in 2028 and $43.55 million in 2029. Salary is how Parsons will make money during the season, as these are game checks.
But this doesn’t mean that Parsons won’t be making big money until his salary jumps massively in 2028. Instead, he has two big option bonuses that will kick in for the 2026 and 2027 seasons.
In 2026, that bonus is $38 million. That is already fully guaranteed. In 2027, his bonus will cost $34.44 million and is also guaranteed at signing. These bonuses essentially make up for the low salaries in 2026 and 2027, but put the Packers in a position where they have to declare early on in the offseason about whether or not they’ll be holding onto Parsons for these years, as option bonuses are generally paid out in March near the start of free agency.
What’s interesting is that this sort of gives the Packers some flexibility in the trade market, at least more than if they paid a bigger signing bonus, if this move doesn’t pan out in Green Bay. Is $120 million fully guaranteed at signing? Yes, but the only dead...
