The business of football continues to churn as NFL teams go through offseason workouts. Here are some items that have caught my eye the past couple of weeks, and my perspectives.
The Packer Way
The Packers’ contract extension with Jaire Alexander, a premium player at a premium position, is an embodiment of their philosophy. They drafted him, developed him into one of the NFL’s top cornerbacks and have now locked him up with a long-term extension.
What is different about the Packers’ player financial strategy now, compared to when I did their contracts and managed their cap from 1999 to 2009, is their contract structure. My cap philosophy was“pay as you go,” matching cap and cash as much as possible to allow for future flexibility. That is not how the Packers have structured Alexander’s deal, or other contracts on their books.
Alexander is receiving a $30 million signing bonus, prorated out over six years with $5 million a year of cap charges and a $1 million salary. Thus, his 2022 cash number is $31 million and his ’22 cap number is $7 million, representing $24 million cash over cap. I would have used more cap room this year, giving him the same $31 million with more in salary or roster bonus (not prorated) to smooth out the cap hits in the future. As we know in cap management: cap-friendly early = cap-unfriendly late.
The current Packers management is heavy on early low salaries and high signing bonuses. I get it; they are trying to squeeze everything they can out of Aaron Rodgers’s uncertain tenure there (his contract is structured as a one-year deal) and caring less about the future than I did.
One constant does remain about the Packers, something I have been telling people for the past 25 years: They are consistently one of the highest-spending teams in the NFL. This does not get noticed because the Packers spend primarily on their own players, not on quick-fix free agents. Alexander’s extension is a shining example of that.
