Acme Packing Company
Despite adding some big free agents this offseason, the Packers remain on track to be among lowest-spending teams in the NFL.
As the end of the Aaron Rodgers era approached, the Green Bay Packers spent heavily in the late 2010s, presumably in the hopes of securing another Super Bowl championship and hoisting one more Lombardi before Father Time caught up to Rodgers.
While Green Bay comes in slightly higher than league average for spending on player salaries since the adoption of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, over the past five league years the team clocks in at below league average.
There will certainly be ebb and flow in the spending habits of most teams, with cash spending exceeding the salary cap in some years, and coming in lower in others. For the Packers, though, there is absolutely no denying the shift in spending that began immediately following the 2020 season.
In seven of the eight seasons leading up to 2020, the Packers cash spending outpaced the salary cap, peaking with an uncharacteristic spending spree in free agency in 2019 that saw Green Bay add Za’Darius Smith, Preston Smith, Billy Turner and Adrian Amos. That cash usage aided the team to a 13-3 season under new head coach Matt LaFleur, and helped push cash spending to almost 115% of the salary cap in 2020.
Thus, while the cash spending of the Packers outpaced the salary cap in seven of eight seasons, including four straight seasons ending in 2020, the cash spending of Green Bay has come in lower than the cap in three of the four seasons since. On top of that, based on the current roster and scheduled salaries, the Pack is on pace to see cash spending well below the salary cap once again in 2025, which would mark the fourth time in five years that this would be the case. That despite the fact that the Packers have spent the 11th-most money adding outside free agents so far this offseason, per Over the Cap.
Specifically, only once since 2021 have the Packers been outside the bottom half of the league in cash spending and twice been out of the bottom six. That one season was 2022, when the Packers loaded up once again, spending more than almost every team in the league in Rodgers’ final year in Green Bay. They finished 8-9 and moved on from Rodgers that offseason.
Where Green Bay has finished in cash spending in recent seasons relative to the rest of the league demonstrates the effect of the spending in a push for one more reign before the end of Rodgers’ career.
However, in spite of these factors combining to force the team into a...
