Packers Salary Cap Update: $32.5 million in space left after early Free Agent signings

As of the present moment, the Green Bay Packers have re-signed two unrestricted free agents and tendered qualifying offers to a handful of exclusive-rights free agents. With these contracts now in place, we can estimate the Packers’ available cap space at the present time.

Perry’s contract, though averaging $12 million per season in total money, comes in with a $6 million salary cap hit in 2017 based on the breakdown of the deal. Barclay’s contract lands at $1.3 million, and the ERFAs knock a few additional players down out of the top 51 contracts, which are used to calculate the cap in the offseason.

According to Over The Cap, this leaves the Packers with $32,776,470 in salary cap space, which accounts for the dead money from two released players (Sam Shields and James Starks) and the cap rollover from 2016’s unused space. This also accounts for the slight restructuring of Letroy Guion’s contract, which reduces his potential roster bonuses by $200,000 this season and shifts that dollar value to 2018 instead.

The rest of the contracts that the Packers sign will bump some first- or second-year players out of the top 51, and therefore the impact of any signings will be lessened by around $465,000.

According to current rookie pool estimates, the 2017 draft class will likely take up about $5.76 million in cap space once the season begins. However, during the offseason — when the top 51 rule remains in place — they only would require about $1.89 million based on the difference between the pool estimates and the contracts that fall below the top 51 threshold. That leaves the Packers with roughly $30.5 million in effective cap space for the offseason.

Stay tuned, as we will update this post with the details of any additional signings that are reported for Green Bay.