The mystery surrounding Aaron Rodgers' record-breaking new contract with the Green Bay Packers has now been unclouded. Well, sort of.
The basic gist of it is the Packers quarterback is indeed making a boatload of cash. A Titanic-sized cruise ship filled with dollar bills to be precise. Aaron Rodgers will be making over $50 million per year on average through the next three seasons throwing passes for Green Bay.
But it's apparently a lot more complicated than that. NFL insider Ian Rapoport tried to make sense of the contract details of the Packers QB's new deal.
“Aaron Rodgers does get his $50 million per year over the three years of the deal. But that isn't even the most important number here. … Aaron Rodgers gets $62 million average per year through the first two years of this deal. He gets $74.5 million in the first new year of this deal. All of that together, that's $150.6 million guaranteed for Aaron Rodgers.”
While the dollar figures set to enter Aaron Rodgers' bank account are certainly eye-popping. It's apparently had an opposite effect on the Packers' salary cap figure. How that makes sense, only the NFL cap wizards truly know.
However, lowering their salary cap hit for the first couple of years on Aaron Rodgers' deal does come at a cost. The Packers will reportedly incur a massive dead cap hit if Rodgers no longer keeps the mantle as Green Bay's QB past 2023.
The dollar figures flying around are both equal parts massive and perplexing. But at the end of the day, it just means that Aaron Rodgers, reigning NFL MVP, will continue to sling passes for the Green Bay Packers. Unless you're a minority owner of the team whose money actually goes into helping pay for the massive salary bill, anything beyond Rodgers playing isn't your problem.