You learn something new every day.
Despite yesterday’s date being June 9th, the Green Bay Packers are evidently not beholden to treating the release of cornerback Jaire Alexander as a post-June 1st release after all. In an unusual decision, the Packers are electing to absorb all of the dead money on Alexander’s contract on their 2025 salary cap, as Matt Schneidman of The Athletic reported*.*
According to Ken Ingalls, it would have required a restructure of Alexander’s contract immediately prior to his release to accomplish this maneuver, something that the team evidently managed to pull off.
Normally, any player who is released after June 1st and who has multiple years remaining on his contract will have dead money split up over the next two seasons. This cap mechanic is common enough that the NFL has even allowed teams to designate a player as a “post-June 1st” release prior to that date, which lets teams spread that hit out while delaying the cap relief until that day arrives.
In Alexander’s case, however, the Packers are going in the opposite direction.
Instead of taking on roughly $7.5 million in dead money in 2025 and the remaining $9.5 million for 2026, as would normally happen with a release at this time of year, the Packers will eat the entire $17 million number this season instead. By processing the move in this manner, Green Bay does still free up about $7.6 million for 2025 — Alexander’s cap number before the release was $24.6 million — while not having to carry any dead money into 2026 as a result.
The impact on 2026 is significant, as Green Bay will be free of Alexander’s entire $27 million cap number next season. Overthecap.com projects that this will take the Packers from being roughly $10 million over next year’s estimated cap number to $17 million under, without accounting for any rollover cap space from 2025.
That rollover makes the move that much more interesting, however. The Packers could have simply released Alexander as a normal, post-June 1st cut while operating in such a way that allowed them to roll over that extra $10 million into 2026 to account for the additional dead money. With Green Bay not in danger of violating any league rules about spending within a certain number of the cap over a rolling period, their decision to take on the full dead money this season looks like they simply would rather keep the books simple while knowing that they have plenty of cap space this season to absorb the entire amount all at once.
This also further confirms that the Packers were not concerned the finances of the release — they could have made this move at any point prior to June and it would have had the same effect on their books. Instead, this weekend’s deadline was clearly all about whether the team and player could come to an agreement before the start of minicamp.