Packers latest addition hints that they’ll soon be hated by Nick Wright

May 19, 2023 ndowd

The Green Bay Packers appear to have every intention of hacking the salary cap with a new analyst in tow.

The Green Bay Packers are entering an obvious new chapter in 2023. They’ve officially said goodbye to Aaron Rodgers, who will suit up for the New York Jets next year, and hand the keys of the offense off to youngster Jordan Love.

It’s the second time in recent-ish franchise history they’ve traded a beloved starter to the Jets and looked to their young QB developing behind the scenes. It worked for them before with the Brett Favre-to-Rodgers transition, maybe it’ll work again.

While the most important additions that can be made are on the field and to the coaching staff, there are sneaky good adds that can be made to football organizations, and one of them is a salary cap analyst. The Packers just made an addition there that could help get them elite talent around Love for years to come.

Packers add a known salary cap wizard

Joey Laine is the latest Packers addition, joining the organization as a salary cap analyst, a role he filled with the New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears.

Joey Laine is the new salary cap analyst for the #Packers. Laine spent more than a decade with the #Saints, then followed Ryan Pace to the #Bears and spent eight seasons in Chicago as Director of Football Administration.

— Neil Stratton (@InsideTheLeague) May 17, 2023

En route to a rebuild with the Bears, they have the fourth-most dead money in 2023. While that sounds inefficient, the defending NFC Champs have the most dead money on their books.

Laine will not be taking over the salary cap entirely, but rather, he’ll serve (presumably) as an advisor/second-in-command of the cap to Russ Ball:

I don’t know why people are being weird about this because Russ Ball is still very much in charge and is one of the best cap/salary guys in the NFL.

Ball worked with Laine when Laine was just starting out with the Saints https://t.co/CuObUBO4pM

— Peter Bukowski (@Peter_Bukowski) May 18, 2023

Laine was also involved in the early building of the strategy the Saints use in building their books under Mickey Loomis. New Orleans frequently hands out strange contracts (remember the weird one they gave to Taysom Hill?) and restructures them later to keep competitive while bringing in more talent than the salary cap, when viewed in a one-dimensional way, might otherwise not permit.

It’s angered pundits like Nick Wright, who has called for the league to change rules because he views the strategy as fraud and not creative circumvention of the written rulebook. Saints fans thought his take was laughable and uninformed, and it got him in a nasty back-and-forth with insider and owner of NewOrleans.football Nick Underhill on Twitter.

In the end, it doesn’t change a ton for Green Bay since Ball will still be in command of the cap, and since Brian Gutekunst has the ultimate decisions on personnel. But having another perspective in the room to get creative simply can’t hurt.

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