While many fans are excitingly waiting to see what kind of big name free agents Packers general manager Ted Thompson decides to not sign, the flip side of the coin is that often times players are released to make room for those big free agent contracts.  While the Packers aren’t likely to sign a huge free agent contract, that doesn’t mean that the Packers front office won’t clean house a little to open up more money for extensions and resignings.  But which players are most likely to be cut by the Packers?  Over The Cap has developed the Expected Contract Value (ECV) metric which attempts to measure how invested a team is to a certain player.  Players with average salaries higher than $2 million are included and the metric looks at the following points.

·      Dead money ratio: Essentially this looks at how much money a team would save by releasing a player versus how much dead money his release would incure.  The higher the ratio is towards dead money, the more likely a team will not cut a player even when that player is not performing to the level of his contract

·      Remaining contract: Somewhat similar to the dead money ratio, this looks at how much money a team has spent on a player versus how much more is due based on his contract.  As players go through their contracts, the amount due becomes less and less and thus the penalty of cutting them also becomes less.  Some contracts have high dead money figures at the end of their contracts that make it prohibitive to cut a player but usually those are reserved for high priced free agents.

·      Peak age: Simply the difference in age to a player versus when the age of players that play his position typically produce the most.  Running backs will have lower peak ages than quarterbacks.

·      Approximate value: taken from ProFootball Reference, AV attempts to assign a value for each season a player participates in.  You can read the nitty gritty details here. 

1.     Julius Peppers – (22.8% ECV): The obvious candidate on the team, Peppers unfortunately hits pretty much every metric point involved in calculating ECV.  Not only is Peppers way past the peak age for defensive linemen but he pretty much shatters even the ceiling at 36.  Add to that a contract that will pay him $10.5 million, $8 million of which can be saved by cutting him.  Finally he’s a free agent after 2016 with no dummy or void years, meaning the Packers have no more money invested in him.  Mike Neal and Nick Perry are also set to become free agents and are much younger and likely a lot cheaper as well.  However, Peppers is perhaps the only truly consistent pass rushing force outside of Clay Matthews, who likely has been permanently installed at ILB, meaning the Packers do have a need at the position.  Given all that I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Packers approach Peppers for an overall pay cut in return more guaranteed money, which is currently only comprised 23% of his salary.  

2.     Jordy Nelson – (40.8% ECV): A little bit of a surprise given many analyst and fans have decided that the loss of Nelson was the entire reason behind the Packers offensive regression.  I have never been a proponent of that theory and the injury couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Nelson.  Nelson signed a very team friendly contract in 2014 that only really starts to balloon in cost this year in 2016.  In 2015, Nelson’s contract was a very low $4.6 million, which then nearly doubles to $8.3 million this year followed by the bulk of the money, which comes in at $11.5 million in 2017 and $12.5 in 2018.  While the Packers likely don’t believe that Jordy Nelson was the only reason why the Packers offense was so poor this year, not having him certainly didn’t help and $8.3 million (and the sense of loyalty to Nelson, which is likely huge for Thompson and Russ Ball), will almost certainly keep him on the team this year.  The bigger problem is that if Nelson doesn’t recover as well as has been reported, he very well could be a release in 2017. 

3.     TJ Lang – (61.3% ECV): Interestingly TJ Lang makes this list while fellow guard Josh Sitton (90.8% ECV) doesn’t.  From a purely contract standpoint, Sitton is actually more likely to get cut; both are on the last year of their contracts with around $6-7 million due this year.  Lang actually is slightly more protected as he has $1.1 million guaranteed this year from his signing, roster and work bonuses while Sitton has $0 guaranteed money in 2016.  Sitton is also 1 year older, so why is Lang in danger of being cut while Sitton isn’t?  The only possible reason is that Sitton is a much more decorated player and his relative “performance” is significantly higher than Lang’s.  While from a pure cash and careerAV perspective this may be true (Sitton has been named All-Pro/Pro Bowl etc.)  Lang is certainly an above average to maybe even borderline elite guard.  In the end this is likely more the fault of the fickle nature of popularity and not so much about the money.

4.     Datone Jones – (64% ECV): Jones has a very interesting case.  On one hand he has the pedigree of being a 1^st round draft choice and thus it’s possible that the Packers exercise the 5^th year option.  However the Packers have yet to actually exercise the offer once since its inception (though that statement is likely a little biased since the Derek Sherrod and Nick Perry are the only two players who even had a 5^th year option).  To be honest, it’s hard to think of what the Packers think of Jones; on one hand he can be disruptive in both the pass and the run but he’s injured quite often and was hit with a 1 game suspension for substance abuse.  My guess is that they go 3 for 3 and not exercise their option until next year with Clinton-Dix meaning Jones is on a contract year.  At $2.4 million, cutting Jones likely doesn’t make much sense given that 40% of it is guaranteed and the low overall value.  Again this is likely an issue with the metric as rookie contracts don’t really fit the mold of a standard contract given they are almost entirely guaranteed.