Packers move another $3 million of cap money with Aaron Jones contract restructure

A day after restructuring Kenny Clark’s contract to move nearly $11 million in cap space out of 2022, the Green Bay Packers are at it again with anther member of the roster. On Thursday it was Aaron Jones getting a signing bonus with a restructured deal in a move that will push about $3 million of his 2022 salary cap hit into future years.

As with the news of Clark’s contract adjustment, ESPN’s Field Yates was the first to report the news on Jones.

On Jones’ existing contract, which runs through 2024, Green Bay was due to pay a roster bonus of $3.75 million in mid-March. That money plus a bit more of his base salary was moved into a signing bonus. The Packers also added two void years to his deal in 2025 and 2026, allowing them to spread the roughly $3.8 million over five years.

While the move will keep Jones’ cap number below $6 million for 2022, it will swell to over $20 million in 2023, a number that will surely be untenable for a running back who has dealt with nagging injuries. Jones is still only 27 years old and will not turn 30 until December of 2024, but he has dealt with numerous knee injuries throughout his five-year NFL career and has missed at least two games in four of those seasons.

After freeing up about $14 million in cap room for 2022, the Packers now sit approximately $40 million over the cap number for the coming season. They will surely continue to restructure as many of their veteran players’ deals as they can, with David Bakhtiari likely to be up next. By continuing to use the maximum amount of void years as the team has done with Clark and Jones, the Packers could shift another $9 million or so of Bakhtiari’s cap number into future years.

Stay tuned as we continue to learn of more cap mechanics as the Packers need to be below the $208.2 million base cap number before the start of the 2022 league year in mid-March.