Key deadline passes for Packers’ upcoming free agents

Green Bay has now taken on an additional $9.5 million in dead cap for the 2024 season.

When the calendar turned to February 19th, a couple of salary cap mechanics where triggered for the Green Bay Packers. At midnight, the Packers were no longer able to shed the void years being executed on several deals, which impact tackle Yosh Nijman, cornerback Keisean Nixon and safety Darnell Savage moving forward.

In total, the dead cap that Green Bay took on in 2024 by not pushing back those salary cap hits for the trio came out to be $9.48 million, per cap analyst Ken Ingalls. Below is how much immediate cap space that the Packers could have saved by extending each individual player:

• Safety Darnell Savage: $4.1 million
• Tackle Yosh Nijman: $1.9 million
• Cornerback Keisean Nixon: $1.1 million

Now that this deadline has passed, it seems less likely that the Packers will re-sign any of these players, though, you shouldn’t take the inaction as a done deal for these players in green and gold. Remember, Green Bay has done this in the past with the likes of Nixon and inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell, only to re-sign them once they hit the open market.

If you want to handicap how likely it is that the Packers would bring back these free agents, the following list is in order of most to least likely:

1. Nixon
2. Savage
3. Nijman

Nijman was tendered as a restricted free agent last offseason, which paid him well below the market price of a borderline starting tackle in the league. With the emergence of not only Zach Tom but also Rasheed Walker, Nijman ended up filling in as a swing tackle for most of the year — despite starting left tackle David Bakhtiari missing all but one game in 2023. Assume that he’s going to sign somewhere else in free agency, considering Green Bay’s continued cap crunch.

Savage was a weekly starter for the Packers, but a new change in defensive leadership could lead to the team moving on from their former first-round pick. The coaching staff has talked up Savage’s jump in play from 2022 to 2023, but the position was still not a strength of the roster last year. At the moment, his status is the most uncertain of the trio.

Meanwhile, Nixon signed a one-year, $4 million contract with the Packers following his first First-Team All-Pro kick returning season in 2022. He repeated those accolades in 2023, when he led the league in kick return yards on top of being the team’s slot cornerback. He’s also made his intentions clear: He wants to be a Packer moving forward. At this point, it seems like Nixon is more likely than not to return to Green Bay in 2024, though, he will likely test the open market for anything is finalized. The question now is simply if Nixon would re-up a similar short-term, mid-level contract or if he’s going to ask for more pay now that he’s established himself as not only a returner but also a defender.