{"id":748327,"date":"2026-02-13T03:19:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/748327\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T03:19:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:19:15","slug":"why-green-bay-is-unlikely-to-make-nfl-free-agency-splash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/748327\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Green Bay is unlikely to make NFL Free Agency splash"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Green Bay Packers have in-house free agents<\/a>, and they must make decisions. That\u2019s before they can dip their toes in the free-agent waters<\/a>. However, here is why the Packers are unlikely to make an NFL free-agent splash.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an unfortunate circumstance of contract needs and cap inflexibility<\/a>, according to acmepackingcompany.com. The Packers have five players among the top 100 free agents: Romeo Doubs, Malik Willis, Quay Walker, Kingsley Enagbare, and Rasheed Walker.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow you may not be sad to see the backside of a handful of these players, but the fact is that GM Brian Gutekunst has his work cut out for him,\u201d Zach Rapport wrote. \u2028\u201cCompounding that likely roster churn is a severely restricted salary cap outlook, as outlined recently by our own Justis Mosqueda.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreen Bay ranks 25th in cap flexibility for 2026, and (is) only able to generate roughly $52 million through restructures. That\u2019s a fraction of what other teams should be able to muster in the coming months. Without letting guys walk in free agency and aggressive space creation via cuts or restructures \u2026 the Packers simply won\u2019t have room to pursue marquee free agents \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n

Packers bordering on a roster-structure disaster?<\/p>\n

Well, that\u2019s maybe a little dramatic. The Packers should be very competitive in 2026 if they remain relatively healthy.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s this. Maybe they can pull off<\/a> a Gutekunst magic act, according to Sports Illustrated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are other levers that general manager Brian Gutekunst can pull if he needs to create cap space to build upon a roster that has reached the playoffs the last three years but went one-and-done the last two,\u201d Bill Huber wrote. \u201cOne way is through simple contract restructures. That is done through the waving of a magic wand. A base salary can be cut to the league minimum, with the rest turned into a signing bonus over the remaining life of the contract. The player gets the same amount of money, the team gets the cap space \u2014 no negotiation required.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Packers can create tens of millions of dollars of cap space through restructuring. And they could use that cash flow to become at least a marginally big player in the 2026 free-agent game. But \u2026 other teams can do more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Green Bay Packers have in-house free agents, and they must make decisions. That\u2019s before they can dip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,2514,2513,3031,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-748327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-greenbay","12":"tag-greenbaypackers","13":"tag-matt-lafleur","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116061166944183941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}