Sections Answers to 5 Critical Questions About Jordan Love’s Recent Contract with Packers

Ingalls: The Packers have been able to keep Jordan Love’s cap impact low for a few reasons. First, even though it’s a four-year extension, the contract is for a total of five years, so they’ve spread the impact of his novel league-record $75 million signing bonus over five years. So the cap cost of that $75 million cash payment only costs $15 million per year on their salary cap.

Second, his second-year salary is relatively low at (only) $13 million compared to the $79 million he’s getting to play in 2024. As a result, his salary cap hit for 2025 is less than $30 million because the Packers simply aren’t paying him much for his services this year.

In 2026, the immense mid-term cash flows will begin to raise and costs will begin to accumulate in subsequent years but will allow for three years of reasonable maximum costs on a record contract.

Ingalls: It’s true that the Packers typically don’t guarantee money beyond the initial signing bonus. I can’t think of any other example off the top of my head other than Aaron Rodgers, but as is often the case in the NFL, quarterbacks are usually the exception to most rules.

In the case of Jordan Love, the Packers were pushed out of their guarantee comfort zone a bit, but they still made significantly less than recent top-of-the-market offers. Love is receiving $100.8 million guaranteed at signing, which ranks ninth in the NFL despite having the novel highest signing bonus in NFL history at $75 million and matching the highest overall contract value in NFL history at $55 million/year.

The Packers are making up for the difference by inserting “rolling guarantees” into the deal for years three and four of the contract. These kick in halfway through the contract, so they are not part of the initial $100.8 million in reported guarantees. Jordan Love will receive another $39.5 million guaranteed for 2026 if he is still under contract in March 2025, and another $20 million guaranteed for 2027 if he is still under contract in March 2026. There are technical reasons for not doing all of this up front, but overall, the amount of guarantees in this deal should be considered a major negotiating victory for Jordan Love and his agents.

Ingalls: Jordan Love’s contract includes two immense mid-contract option bonuses in Years 3 and 4. For now, let’s ignore the “option” and simply treat them as “bonuses,” and this deal is very typical of what the Packers like to do with their top contracts — in fact, it’s demanding to find a significant Packers veteran contract without one. Recent deals for Rashan Gary, Jaire Alexander, Kenny Clark, Elgton Jenkins, Xavier McKinney, Preston Smith, Josh Jacobs and Keisean Nixon all include multimillion-dollar mid-contract bonuses.

In recent years, facing tough salary cap constraints, the Packers have restructured nearly all of their contracted roster bonuses into midseason signing bonuses. The move is just an accounting trick and doesn’t change the amount or timing of when players receive their bonus money — but calling it a signing bonus means the Packers can spread the hit of money over the rest of the contract, usually five years, creating short-term cap savings as a desired outcome.

Back to Jordan Love – instead of the immense roster bonuses his teammates have, the Packers are essentially “pre-restructuring” those bonuses to achieve the desired short-term salary cap savings already built into the contract. There are a few additional technicalities and intricacies surrounding option bonuses that I won’t try to get into here, but what’s vital for salary cap purposes is that the option is assumed to be triggered so the team can get a short-term cap hit, but it results in a higher long-term cap hit.

Ingalls: I’d like to get my hands on the contract to read the exact language of the options and guarantees, because that would lend a hand paint a more right picture – until then, I have more vague numbers. But overall, it’s protected to say that with Jordan Love’s double-option bonus being restructured, receiving the highest signing bonus in history and a total of $160 million in built-in guarantees, this is not an uncomplicated contract to get rid of.

The amount of cap pain varies depending on the timing and nature of the potential departure. If things got that bad and the Packers had to let Jordan Love go, it would be devastating. Financially, it would be so crippling (up to $127 million in dead cap space in 2025) that they would have to avoid just cutting him at all costs.

The trade numbers are better because the novel team would take on future guarantees, but they’re still very high-priced. Trading Aaron Rodgers cost the Packers $40.3 million in salary cap space when they moved on. The average cap cost of moving on from Jordan Love between 2025 and 2028 is about $60 million, assuming they’re not obligated to any option bonuses — otherwise, it would be significantly more. The overall goal is for Jordan Love to at least see out years on his contract, and leaving before he turns 30 isn’t even a consideration.

Ingalls: It’s protected to assume Jordan Love won’t be playing in 2028 under his current contract as written. If Love plays another four years and all option bonuses are triggered, the Packers are looking at $74.2 million in salary cap space for Jordan Love’s services in his final year. If they make other cap-saving moves during the contract, the cap space will only grow. All the “cap-friendly” aspects of the deal at the beginning start to become less favorable toward the end.

So one way or another the contract will be changed. If things go south and the Packers don’t want to extend him, they could consider trading or cutting him at a dead cap cost of $63.9M – let’s hope that doesn’t happen!

Otherwise, if they extend his contract, the cap hit will be significantly lower than the $74.2 million they were planning, but unfortunately there will be some bills due to the cap cost raise. By the time 2028 rolls around, $29.2 million of the cap hit will be locked up in 2028 from previously paid bonuses, which will raise the cap hit before a penny is paid. Another $34.7 million is in 2029-31, which will be added to future contract amounts. So if/when we get a second huge contract for Jordan Love, he will have a bit of a “can kickback” burden that they will have to deal with on this current huge deal.

The best financial window for the Packers for the foreseeable future is 2024-26. I’m not saying they can’t do anything after that, but the next few years where Love’s contract is reasonable from a cap perspective opens up an advantage the Packers could try to exploit in the low term.