In what was supposed to be a rebuild year, the Green Bay Packers went 9-8 and made it to the divisional round of the playoffs where they lost a 3 point game to the number one seeded San Francisco 49ers. The 2023 season was supposed to be about finding out what Jordan Love was, and we seem to have found out that he is an extremely capable quarterback in a young and talented offense. The question now becomes, can they sustain their success? How Long can they keep this “window” open?
Back in the summer of 2023, there were a lot of people who were convinced that keeping Jordan Love on the sidelines for so many years was a mistake, due mostly to the fact that the Packers wouldn’t benefit from the “cheap young QB” years. I think we can all see that sitting him may have given him time to learn and improve, but it was in fact at the expense of… well, expenses.
Let’s Talk Salary Cap
The Packers are for the most part finally moving on from the huge bulk of salary cap space they allocated for their previous QB, but it’s just in time for the front office to inevitably offer a hefty contract extension to Jordan love in the next three or four months.
Assuming that Love’s deal is slightly backloaded and goes easy on the 2024 and 2025 salary cap, we can pretty safely say that these next two years are, from a financial perspective, more malleable than perhaps the last few years of whatever contract Love signs.
This is all of course also assuming Love gets at least a four year deal in the ballpark of Daniel Jones’ contract figures. We’ve seen teams overachieve before, and obviously hitting on draft picks can do wonders to financially sustain a team, but at this very moment the Packers are in a significant financial window of contention.
2024 Free Agent Spending Spree?
Does this all mean that the Packers can afford big name free agents for this upcoming season? Not at all, actually. They’ll have more cap space than they did last season, but that was already an incredibly low threshold to surpass. Retaining important players with large cap hits like Aaron Jones and Kenny Clark is going to take some sacrifices elsewhere, and it is likely that we won’t see any big time spending on incoming players if the Packers want to retain their core.
You can certainly expect some added help though, because the front office surely sees this window as clearly as we do.
What to Expect in the Future
In his closing press conference for the season Head Coach Matt LaFleur said that the expectations are different for this team now. No more “young” excuse. No more “at least we know what we’ve got,” and certainly no more “playing with house money.” The expectations for the 2024 Green Bay Packers have returned to what Packers fans have grown accustomed to over the years. The only two options are to end the season in disappointment or to win the whole damn thing.
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Zack is a college student and cheesehead from California. When he’s not in class or writing, you can find him talking about the Packers on Twitter at @Zack_Upchurch.
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