Acme Packing Company
With no hard deadlines, Green Bay is in complete control of the situation.
In the seemingly endless slow-motion saga of Jaire Alexander and the Green Bay Packers, ESPN’s Rob Demovsky reported that there are frustrations internally regarding the player’s inability to stay on the field. The most important part of the report is this quote below:
There are strong indications that Alexander’s time with the Packers will end without him playing another down. Multiple team sources have privately expressed their frustration with Alexander’s inability to stay healthy and/or play through injuries.
Between this, the fact that Jaire Alexander is due to make north of $17M in cash in 2025 (assuming he were to attend off-season workouts and collect his $700k bonus for doing so), and the reality that Green Bay can move on from Alexander without damaging their short-term cap accounting, it has led many to the conclusion that Alexander is a certainty to be released. I’m not here to say that Alexander will not be released. I think the most likely outcome today is just that. It’s pretty rare for Packers internal sources to say too much about their players unless things are reaching a breaking point like they did with Aaron Rodgers; seemingly, they are approaching such a situation with Jaire Alexander.
In this situation, though, it is the Packers who are in full control. Alexander has no particular deadlines to worry about in his contract, outside from his off-season workout bonus, which he won’t be able to earn until late May if prior off-season schedules are any indication. There is no roster bonus coming on the first, third, fifth, or any other day of the league year.
And unlike much of the past five years, the Packers don’t need to scratch and claw to reach cap compliance. The Packers will be sitting with just north of $38M in cap space when the league year starts, and while not all of that is truly available to use to add talent in free agency due to the draft class, practice squads, and in-season flexibility, those are all cap hits that won’t come to fruition until May or June at the earliest. The Packers can do whatever they want to do in free agency without having to necessarily worry about Jaire Alexander’s cap hit holding them back. The Packers aren’t going to burn up $38M of space in free agency this year, so Jaire’s cap accounting does not bear any issue for them in adding veteran talent. And if they decide to cut him down the road, they’ll free up a little over $6.8M (assuming they do not designate it as a post-6/1 release, which would give them more relief this year but spread the dead cap across two seasons).
Because there is no roster bonus deadline and because Green Bay does not need the additional cap flexibility that a Jaire Alexander release would entail, this puts them in a position of strength if they are open to Alexander...
