It's not the best moment for the Green Bay Packers over the last decade to be aggressive at the trade deadline, to be fair. The team is 2-4, and it's more likely that they will be sellers. But the market is not always an exact science, and if Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst sees an opportunity to improve the roster for the short- and long-term, there's no reason not to consider it.

The deadline is next Tuesday, so the NFL market will heat up a little bit over the next couple of days. They still have the Minnesota Vikings game on Sunday, and that could bring extra pieces of information to take into consideration before the limit to close out deals.

Before that, though, keep in mind: the Packers have limited capital, so it's not realistic to expect big-time moves — especially because, as some sort of rebuilding team, they need to keep their higher picks in case things go south for the rest of the year.

So let's take a look at the Packers capital situation, both draft picks and salary cap-wise.

Draft picks

The Green Bay Packers have a really healthy draft situation moving forward. Brian Gutekunst has kept a similar approach to Ted Thompson in regards to trades, and he has avoided parting ways with future draft capital. Gutekunst may be aggressive to trade up sometimes, but always involving just assets from the current season.

Because of that, the Packers have at disposal all of their tradable draft picks, which means their capital for the next three years. Besides that, though, there's not much to work with.

The only draft pick acquired by Green Bay from another team is the New York Jets' 2024 second-round pick. The pick was supposed to be a first-rounder as part of the Aaron Rodgers' deal, but it included a conditional — infamously, Rodgers had to play at least 65% of the Jets' offensive snaps in 2023, and he suffered an Achilles injury four snaps into the season. So the Packers will receive a second-rounder.

Projected extra picks

The Packers were quiet in free agency this past offseason, only adding minimum salary external free agents. The big splash was re-signing cornerback and returner Keisean Nixon, a move which doesn't affect the compensatory pick formula. So that's an advantage draft capital-wise, as Green Bay will receive three or even four extra picks.

According to the Over The Cap projection, the Packers are slated to get three picks: a 4th-rounder for Allen Lazard, and two 6th-rounders for Jarran Reed and Dean Lowry. There's still a chance they get a 7th for Robert Tonyan, but OTC projects that it will be beyond the limit of 32 compensatory picks the NFL awards teams with.

Subtotal

With the four extra picks added, the Packers will have a 1st, two 2nds, a 3rd, two 4ths, a 5th, three 6ths, and a 7th. The Packers can't trade the projected compensatory picks yet because they haven't been awarded, but teams have mechanisms to circumvent that — a conditional into the trade. For example, the Packers could acquire Player X, and the other team would receive the Packers' lowest 4th-round pick. It means that if Green Bay has the compensatory pick, this is the pick that would be sent. If for some reason it doesn't happen, the Packers would be forced to trade their original pick.

Salary cap

The big problem for the Packers to execute trades before the deadline is how tight they are in terms of salary cap. According to Over the Cap, they now have only $8.6 million to work with — and they need to keep something open to operate during the season, for moves like practice squad elevations.

Even worse, the Packers basically maxed out their flexibility to open up more space. Over the last couple of years, the Packers were aggressive making restructures and adding void years, and the bill has come due. They needed to restructure basically every non-rookie deal to have enough room, and now the last possible move left was to extend edge defender Rashan Gary. However, that's becoming less and less attractive. By the time of the trade deadline, it would actually cost the Packers cap space to pull it off.

So for the Packers to execute a trade, that would have to be for a cheap target, or the other team would have to be willing to absorb most of the player's money this year. It's not unusual for teams to do that, but it costs extra draft capital for the acquiring team.

Considering the roster-building phase and the reality of the Green Bay Packers, it's difficult to find a way to execute any big, significant addition. There's ways to do that, however, and it's up to Brian Gutekunst to evaluate his alternatives.

5 players that the Packers could trade before the deadline

NFL trade deadline is on October 31st