Packers incur $40 million in dead cap from Rodgers trade originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
The Packers saved themselves around $10 million in the salary cap department by trading Aaron Rodgers. But their approximately $40 million dead cap penalty for his early departure will sting their 2023 books, according to Spotrac.
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If you need a refresher, the dead cap is the result of a player's contract terminating before it's fully completed. The Bears endured similar cap casualties last year by trading Roquan Smith and Robert Quinn.
The exact equation is totaling the amount of money a player has been paid up to the point of departure, adding the amount of guaranteed money on his contract, subtracting the total cap hit the team has taken thus far into the contract, and equating that number. That number represents the dead cap, the figure a team must allocate from its salary cap to satisfy the rest of the contract.
Here's an explanation from Spotrac about the Packers' dead cap from Rodgers' contract:
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"Thanks to $7.6M of bonus proration from his 2018 contract, and another $32.6M from his 2022 roster bonus (treated as a signing bonus), Green Bay is left with a sizable $40,313,568 cap hit for the 2023 season," Spotrac wrote on the website.
"Since the trade will be processed before June 1st, that entire amount will be taken on this season, with no further dead cap to be dealt with for the Packers. The $40.3M figure is actually $8.7M more than the original cap hit Aaron Rodgers held for the 2023 season. This move drops Green Bay’s Top 51 cap space down to an estimated $12.6M (still plenty to account for their now-inflated draft class)."
All in all, the Packers incurred a lot of dead cap but saved themselves some money by not going through with Rodgers' gargantuan contract.
