The Green Bay Packers are going into the 2024 draft with a lot of premium draft picks. Five picks in the first three rounds to be exact. The last two drafts appear to be a major success. Names like Lukas Van Ness, Luke Musgrave, Tucker Kraft, Jayden Reed, Dontayvion Wicks, Karl Brooks, Quay Walker, Devonte Wyatt, Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, and Zach Tom were all added to the team within the last two seasons.
Now the Packers could be landing yet another premium draft pick for the future.
The Green Bay Packers Could Be Adding Yet Another Premium Draft Pick
Alex Ballentine of Bleacher Report annotated how this could happpen:
Jets Receive: OT David Bakhtiari
Packers Receive: 2025 conditional second-round pick (based on Bakhtiari’s health and play)
General Manager Brian Gutekunst went out of his way to emphatically let people know he wasn’t going to trade veteran left tackle David Bakhtiari last August. That was then. This is now.
The financial picture around trading Bakhtiari has changed this offseason. While the Packers would have incurred a massive dead cap charge for dealing the veteran last offseason, they stand to save a whopping $21 million in cap space by trading him this offseason.
That might not do much for the Packers roster, but it creates a significant amount of cap space that could be used to retain their current crop of free agents or get a little more aggressive to fill needs in free agency.
The trick with trading Bakhtiari is figuring out just how much he’s worth. When he’s on the field, he’s still shown the ability to play at a high level. The problem is he’s 32, coming off a complicated knee injury and only played 55 snaps last season.
It’s hard for the Packers to continue forward with the veteran because of his contract. Trading him would allow the team taking him on to inherit his $10.7 million base salary, which isn’t all that hard to manage.
The best path toward a trade might be with a conditional draft pick. A modified formula that the Jaguars and Falcons used to trade Calvin Ridley last offseason would make sense.
In that case, the Falcons traded the receiver to Jags for a 2023 fifth-round pick and a conditional pick in 2024. If Ridley reached certain playing milestones it became a third-round pick and if the Jaguars re-sign him this offseason it would become a second-rounder.
A Bakhtiari conditional pick could start as a fourth-rounder but elevate to a third if Bakhtiari plays in more than 50 percent of the offensive snaps and become a second-rounder if the Jets were to extend him beyond the final year of his contract.
What Is Bakhtiari’s Future In Green Bay?
It’s been an interesting relationship between the Packers and David Bakhtiari over the past few seasons. The ACL tear Bakhtiari suffered in December 2020 has had a profound impact on his career. The ACL tear has limited Bakhtiari to just one game in two of the last three seasons (2021 and 2023). Despite playing 11 games in 2022, Bakhtiari’s season was cut short again due to knee issues.
It has worth noting that Bakhtiari seems to want to return to the Packers. Robin Adams of Wisconsin Sports Heroics first reported it for our site:
The fact of the matter is that the Packers seem to have found their next franchise quarterback in Jordan Love. It also appears that the young wide receivers that he has around him are going to turn out to be fairly special players as well. The next job for the organization, then, is to make sure he is adequately protected.
When Bakhtiari was on the field in Week One, he proved that he is still one of the best left tackles in the NFL. In his absence, neither Rasheed Walker nor Yosh Nijman have been able to grab a permanent hold of the position.
As such, it appears that Green Bay may not move forward with either at the position. Nijman is going to be a free agent anyway, and Walker may need a little more seasoning. Who better to learn under than one of the best tackles in Packers history?
And that certainly appears to be Bakhtiari’s plan.
If the Packers are offered a second round pick for a player they may be planning on moving on from anyways, it may be too good to pass up.
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1 Comment
We shall see….