What Will Green Bay Do With their New-Found Cap Space and Draft Picks?

It has been an uncanny week in the NFL, especially for the Green Bay Packers. Early this week, they signed Aaron Rodgers to a 3-year, $150 million contract including $101 million guaranteed.

All was seemingly well with the Packers until on Thursday night when it was announced that they will be trading Davante Adams to the Raiders for a first round pick and second round pick in 2022.

After the culmination of the Aaron Rodgers deal, it was all but assumed that Adams would be on his way back, the only question was what the price would ultimately be. What could have possibly happened with the relationship between Rodgers and Adams? Evidently, despite their shared success, their bond was not as strong as it appeared to be. So where do the Packers go from here?

This coming season, regardless of what the Packers do this offseason, Adams will be better than any of the options they bring in. They could draft a receiver at No. 22, and sign the best available receiver, but in this upcoming season — one in which the Packers felt they could contend for a title in — Adams will still be far and away the better player.

Green Bay is stuck in a position where they will have to dig their way out of the crater left by Adams leaving.

Due to the timing of the situation, a lot of the top WRs who were available this offseason are set to play elsewhere, including Allen Robinson and Amari Cooper. While GMs and Front Offices are in the mindset of building sustained success, Green Bay will be hard-pressed to find contributors to the quality of Adams in their short term title contention window before Rodgers hangs up his cleats.

“I’m just hard pressed to figure out the cause of this happening as late as it did,” said Former NFL General Manager Mike Tannenbaum. “How are the Packers going to be better this year because of this move?”

That said, Joe Banner feels differently, suggesting that “If they are able to keep Rasul Douglas, sign Jarvis Landry, use the 22nd pick on a wide receiver, and sign a quality tight-end, I think they’re as good as they were in the short term.”

After moving on from Adams, Green Bay will have roughly $21M in cap space that they must use to improve their weapons on offense. Currently, the top wide receivers on the Packers are Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb, who combined for 68 receptions last season, 55 less than Adams had himself.

Here are some of the top Free Agent weapons still available: