Packers finally reach long-term extension with big piece of the roster

The Green Bay Packers are keeping Kenny Clark around for the foreseeable future. The defensive tackle, a first-round pick in 2016, will sign a three-year, $64 million deal that will keep him in Green Bay through 2027. Since David Bakhtiari got released, Clark is the longest-tenured Packer.

Clark was entering the last year of his second deal. Despite being a veteran, he is still only 28 — he entered the league in 2016 extremely young. Clark was slated to make $17 million in 2024, and that number goes up to $29 million. At the same time, the Packers will be able to reduce his cap number, which previously was $27.49 million.

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Cap ramifications

According to Tom Silverstein , Clark will get a $17.5 million signing bonus. Considering the information that has been released so far, and in the case the Packers didn’t add a void year to spread more cap, Clark’s cap hit in 2024 would be $15.85 million, opening up $11.64 million in cap space.

Clark’s $21.3 million average in new money isn’t actually as high for the defensive tackle market. He becomes the 10th highest-paid player at his position, below Chris Jones, Christian Wilkins, Justin Madubuike, Derrick Brown, Quinnen Williams, Jeffery Simmons, DeForest Buckner, Daron Payne, and Dexter Lawrence. Clark gets ahead of Javon Hargrave, who signed with the San Francisco 49ers in free agency last year.

The contract gets even more team-friendly considering what was already previously established. It’s actually a four-year, $81 million deal — a real $20.25 million average for an extremely productive defensive player.

Impact

It’s still unclear at this point how the Packers will structure the deal, but it should help them to reach a deal with Jordan Love as well. General manager Brian Gutekunst had mentioned how both deals could be connected.

"We would love to keep Kenny around," general manager Brian Gutekunst told Cheesehead TV earlier this offseason. "We'll kind of see how all that goes moving forward here, but it's crazy to think he's only 28 years old with the amount of football he's played with us. He started so young. He's a little bit younger than most third contract guys are. He's been very, very durable for us over that time. I think that's something as we go forward here that we're going to look to see if we can do."

If the Packers are indeed able to open up more cap space, the move should be helpful to have more flexibility to go beyond the finish line with Jordan Love.

Kenny Clark is coming off a career year . In 2023, he had 7.5 sacks — he’s had 34 sacks throughout his NFL career.

Related: Jordan Love does what’s expected from him even without a contract extension in place with the Packers