GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers enter the 2024 offseason over the projected salary cap of $242 million. But, hey, it could be worse.

And it has been worse.

When the NFL set the 2023 salary cap at $224.8 million almost exactly one year ago, the Packers were about $16.5 million over the cap. With the need to sign their draft picks, their overage surged to almost $20.4 million.

And that was without accounting for the forthcoming trade of Aaron Rodgers, which added another $8.7 million to the ledger. So, Green Bay effectively was in a $29 million hole just to get to break-even – let alone having enough money to be active in free agency or having the necessary in-season spending money to handle all the weekly roster machinations.

The Packers aren’t in that bad of shape entering this offseason.

Based on OverTheCap.com’s accounting, the Packers are about $2.896 million over the salary cap. Once they get their 11 projected draft picks under contract – a haul that includes five players in the first three rounds – they’ll be just about $7.40 million over the cap. Only 10 teams are in worse shape financially.

Ken Ingalls, an independent salary-cap analyst, is even more pessimistic.

Again, that’s just to get to break-even. That doesn’t account for any re-signings or additions in free agency. It doesn’t include the space necessary to form a practice squad or to handle in-season moves. And it doesn’t include the fallout of the massive contract extension that’s coming for Jordan Love, which almost certainly will increase his $12.76 million cap charge for 2024.

“I think we’re getting to a little bit better spot than we have been in the past,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said on Thursday. “It’s never perfect, but I do feel that whatever opportunities are out there to improve our team in free agency, that we’ll be able to do that, so I feel good about that.”

There is one obvious way to create a bunch of salary-cap space with one stroke of a pen: releasing left tackle David Bakhtiari.

The former All-Pro’s career was ruined by a knee injury. He played in one game in 2023 before shutting it down to have a fourth and fifth procedure done to, hopefully, get his career back on track.

Releasing him would create almost $21 million in cap savings, according to OverTheCap.com. The bulk of that would come from eliminating his $20.2 million base salary. All the leftover bonus money, coming from the signing bonus given to him in his November 2020 contract extension and previous cap-space-creating restructures, would result in a dead-money charge of about $19.1 million.