Aaron Rodgers agreed to stay with the Green Bay Packers on a three-year, $150 million deal.
His new contract makes him the highest-paid player in terms of annual average value.
Out of that number, he will get a guaranteed $101,515,000 and will have a $40.8 million signing bonus.
As always, there’s a chance that Rodgers may earn the entire amount of his deal if he meets certain conditions.
Likewise, his deal is cap friendly for the first two years to give the Packers an opportunity to remain competitive during his prime years.
However, going through the contract shows that Green Bay pushed more money down the road, as Packers beat reporter Tom Silverstein shared.
One source said the dead money cap hit for the end of Aaron Rodgers’ contract as it stands now is around $75M. That’s when the #Packers go into rebuild mode.
— Tom Silverstein (@TomSilverstein) March 15, 2022
Silverstein said, “One source said the dead money cap hit for the end of Aaron Rodgers’ contract as it stands now is around $75M. That’s when the #Packers go into rebuild mode.”
While Rodgers’ deal involves only the 2022 to 2024 seasons, the contract includes two option years for 2025 and 2026.
Those compensations will only be activated if Rodgers chose to exercise his option bonuses for 2023 and 2024.
If he triggers those options, his cap hit for the 2025 and 2026 seasons will be at $59.3 million and $53.4 million respectively.
However, there’s no guarantee that he will play that long, especially because he initially signed for three years.
Therefore, the Packers must absorb the huge dead cap after he either retires or signs with another team.
Compete Now, Suffer Later
Supposing that the salary cap increases by around $10 million annually, the Packers might be facing a $45 million deficit by 2025 before making any other deals.
That’s the money that they must absorb from Rodgers’ contract even if he’s done playing.
It’s a huge amount that they cannot erase.
Therefore, they will have limited capacity in signing players by that time.
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