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To learn more about our privacy policy Click hereAfter assembling a roster good enough to get to back-to-back NFC Championship Games but not good enough to get to the Super Bowl, Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst faces the biggest challenge of his career.To buy more Packers Men Limited with cheap price, you can visit packernfl.com official website.
How does he get the Packers to the promised land given the financial restraints of a shrinking salary cap?
The Packers are $11.45 million over a projected salary cap of $180.5 million. At this point, the league has said only that the cap won’t be less than $180 million, though two sources this week repeated their belief the salary cap will be at least $185 million and perhaps closer to $190 million. That would be a game-changing difference but, at this point, the budget has to be set at $180 million. After seven consecutive years of $10-plus million increases, that would be a decrease of $19.8 million from 2019.
“This is a unique challenge because this is the first time certainly in my history where the cap has actually gone down and not gone up,” Gutekunst said at the end of the season. “It is a unique challenge but it’s a unique challenge that the entire league is facing. The whole focus will be how do we put the best football out on the field come 2021 when we start the season in September. That’s the entire focus from the whole organization. I think we have a really good football team coming back, so the decisions we make will really be about that.”
The first decision is the one that sets the table for everything else. Do the Packers do just enough restructuring of contracts to get beneath the cap, retain tight end Robert Tonyan, sign draft picks and provide the necessary cap space for the typical in-season roster machinations? Or do the Packers push all the chips to the middle of the table and go for it? That would mean the aggressive restructuring of contracts to not just get under the salary cap but far enough beneath the cap to aggressively pursue talent?
To be sure, going “all in” is one hell of a gamble. The New Orleans Saints went “all in” year after year after year to maximize the window of opportunity provided by aging quarterback Drew Brees. For their efforts, they suffered a few gut-wrenching playoff losses and a crippling $100 million hole in the salary cap. For 2021, at least, they’re toast.
But what does “some risk” mean? Just how willing is Gutekunst to mortgage away some of the future to win in 2021? Because the team’s 2022 cap, even with the likelihood of an exploding salary cap due to new TV deals, isn’t pretty. The conservative approach runs the risk of taking a step back in 2021 and frittering away another season with Rodgers, who will turn 38 late next season. The aggressive approach runs the risk of a smaller-scale, Saints-style disaster.