Packers will have even more spending power than projected after latest NFL news
The NFL finalized the 2025 salary cap number, and it will be higher than initially projected. While most independent cap analysts were working with a number around $272.5 million, the league sent teams a memo last week saying that the real cap will be between $277.5 million to $281.5 million. On Thursday, the NFL and […]
The NFL finalized the 2025 salary cap number, and it will be higher than initially projected. While most independent cap analysts were working with a number around $272.5 million, the league sent teams a memo last week saying that the real cap will be between $277.5 million to $281.5 million. On Thursday, the NFL and NFLPA agreed to a 2025 salary cap of $279.2 million per club.
It's a huge increase compared to the 2024 cap, which was $255.4 million.
Impact on the Packers
Over the Cap had been estimating that the Packers would have $42.14 million in cap space under a $272.5 million cap. With the new official number, the Packers are now projected to have $48.84 million in cap space to start the 2025 league year in March.
After signing draft picks and making procedural moves, the Packers will have something between $25 million and $30 million in effective cap space available to spend in free agency.
According to independent cap analyst Ken Ingalls, the Packers' effective cap space will be close to $28 million—and that's before potentially trading cornerback Jaire Alexander away.
"I feel really good, Russ (Ball) does a fantastic job with our cap and all the decisions we've made over the past few years have put us in a situation where we're in pretty good shape right now," general manager Brian Gutekunst said. "Again, we gotta keep making good decisions, it's never a one-year thing, you're looking at two, three years down the road as far as how these things impact things. We have a lot of good players that are under rookie contracts right now, we've gotta make sure that we're able to extend those guys when that time comes. But I feel really good about our ability to do what we need to do to fill a championship-level team. We are in a better situation than we had in the past two or three."
Cap increase
The salary cap has consistently gone up over the years, outside of a down year in 2021 because of the pandemic. In 2015, the cap was $143.28 million, so it almost doubled in a decade.
This is why it's so important for teams to sign players to long-term deals. The Packers signed Jordan Love to a four-year extension in 2024, and his $55 million yearly average represented 21.53% of the salary cap. A year later, his deal is 19.69% of the cap.
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