The Green Bay Packers can do as much as they want in free agency in 2026

BALTIMORE, MD - DECEMBER 21: Tyler Linderbaum #64 of the Baltimore Ravens warms up before the game against the New England Patriots at M&T Bank Stadium on December 21, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images) | Getty Images

It's everyone's favorite time of year: NFL accounting season. With the season over for all but two teams, and shortly over for everyone, it's time to see what resources you have to improve your team this offseason. After all, that's what this is all about, right? Not winning games, but running off-season simulators to max out your roster.

The problem is, if you're a Packers fan, it doesn't look like there's much to work with. The team traded their first round pick both in 2026 and 2027 for a future Hall of Fame pass rusher, and enter the spring with what can only be described as not a lot of cap space." In fact, the Packers are technically still over the salary cap for 2026 as of writing, according to Over the Cap. Packers cap analyst Ken Ingalls has it laid out here:

I've been using $303m for the 2026 Salary Cap all along, so recent news it's expected to land in the $301.2m to $305.7m range is spot on .

Right now I have the Packers at:
-$2.6m current
-$19.0m effective

Get rid of Jenkins/Gary and we go to:
+$9.5m effective pic.twitter.com/xukDtY2ugq

- Ken - Packers Cap (@KenIngalls) January 30, 2026

The Packers have a good number of free agents, technically negative cap space, and no premium draft pick. Not a lot of fun. Also not particularly great if you're a general manager trying to make your team better. However, the current situation does not properly sum up what we're likely to see.

Barring something quite surprising, neither Elgton Jenkins nor Rashan Gary will be on the Packers next year. Those two cuts alone would open up about $30.5M in cap space. Now that may sound like a lot, but as you can see in Ken's tweet above, it really just gets the Packers breathing room back above the cap to take care of drafting players, signing practice squad players, having an in-season piggy bank, and some room for potential extensions for guys like Tucker Kraft and Christian Watson. To do anything significant on top of that, the cap space is going to have to come from somewhere else.

The perk is that Green Bay has avenues to do so. The problem is, to figure it out, you have to do more convoluted math than the cap websites do, mostly because the sites really struggle with option bonuses, which both Jordan Love and Micah Parsons have on their contracts. Parsons' contract is basically untouchable this year. There's no roster bonus (only an option bonus, which acts like a pre-converted roster bonus), and his salary is barely above the league minimum. It's effectively structured in a way to maximize the can-kicking from the start. This is also partially true for Jordan Love, who also has an option bonus in 2026. The difference here is that Love's base salary is convertible and, if they do a max conversion, could create a little over $7M in 2026 cap space. $7M may not sound like much, but it's about what Xavier McKinney's cap hit was in year one of his deal. Remember, cap hits tend to rise over the course of a contract and are generally depressed most in year one. Zach Tom has a little bit of space to create in his, though his roster bonus is quite small at just $3M, and he, like Parsons, is making barely north of league minimum in base salary, so not a lot of extra wiggle room to work with there, at least not until 2027 where his more sizable roster bonus of $9M is a lever they could pull.

Similar conversions are also possible on the Aaron Banks deal, as he is due a 10.4M roster bonus that I'm not sure Green Bay will be super thrilled about. The key difference in converting money on a Love, Parsons, or Tom contract and converting on Aaron Banks is that when you do a conversion, you're kicking the can, but ideally, on a player you're happy to have on the roster in the future. And I'm not sure come 2027, the Packers will want Aaron Banks on the roster for what he'll cost. However, the lever remains if they want to pull it. And forget about Banks taking a pay cut. His agent will not be answering any calls from the Packers this offseason. He has the leverage. If Banks' contract is converted, assuming they don't add any void years to the deal, and did a maximum base salary and roster bonus conversion, Green Bay would create a little over $11M in cap space. By doing so, however, they would be putting themselves in a precarious position with Banks, where cutting him in 2027 would leave a dead cap hit of nearly $25M. While I am all for leveraging this window, this type of move would seem imprudent to do in full.

Another potentially complicated situation is Xavier McKinney. McKinney is due a sizable roster bonus of $8.5M, which could be converted, but he also only has two years remaining on his deal. Now, the Packers could go wild with tacking on void years to maximize the can-kicking, or perhaps they could look at an extension. They could also tack on the void years now to maximize the can-kicking, and then come back with extension talks after next season, since Green Bay typically does not entertain extensions until the final year of a deal. Doing the maximum amount of can-kicking, with full void years, on McKinney's current contract could open close to $10M in space itself, but would present a likely long-term commitment on the horizon for McKinney next off-season.

Josh Jacobs also has a sizable base salary that is convertible, though with his position and increasing injury issues, touching that contract and making a release following next season more painful seems similarly imprudent to Banks.

Another place they could go, though complicated by his ankle injury, is Devonte Wyatt, who had his fifth-year option picked up and thus has a fully guaranteed base salary just shy of $13M. If Green Bay extends, they can rework how that money is prorated over the cap and pull his cap hit down. How much space they could make depends entirely on the structure, but because cap hits generally rise over the course of the contract, it's quite unlikely to reach his current cap hit of about $13M.

The Packers have generally been more conservative financially, choosing contract structures that maximize their flexibility, control, and ability to keep a relatively clean cap sheet year-over-year. However, during the COVID-era, the Packers had to learn how to utilize these structures and conversions. They've even pre-utilized them in the way the Love and Parsons contracts are structured from the get-go. And their existence on the roster is the prime reason to leverage the team financially. The Packers have a prime-aged top-five quarterback and a prime-aged top-two pass rusher. The time is now. If you're going to push, it has to be 2026-2028 before you start seeing the attrition of the sport take its toll on core players like Zach Tom, Xavier McKinney, Christian Watson, Tucker Kraft, and yes, even Micah Parsons. And on the other side, you'll probably get bailed out by the NFL signing new streaming deals with Amazon and Netflix, in addition to the obscene deals they have with traditional cable.

The reason I wrote this isn't to advocate for any of these can-kicking measures in particular, but to emphasize that Green Bay can do whatever they want to do this spring. If they want to fix the center position entirely by splashing a bunch of money on Tyler Linderbaum in free agency, they can do that. It's hard to make a compelling case to splash money on other free agents, as due to the rapidly rising cap, almost no one of note is even getting to free agency at this point in time, but if Green Bay wants to do something, they absolutely can. And this includes retaining their own free agents. The cap isn't preventing Green Bay from retaining Sean Rhyan or Quay Walker. That does not mean they will, but they are not being prevented from doing so by the cap. They can kick the can, and if you're ever gonna kick the can, the next couple of years are the time to do it. The window is now.