Packers salary cap: Predicting Mason Crosby’s future

What’s next for Green Bay Packers kicker Mason Crosby?

It was a tough year for the Packers’ longtime kicker, who missed nine field goals and two extra-point attempts in the regular season.

Green Bay stuck with Crosby during the year, but with a high cap hit in 2022, what’s next?

Note: Salary cap numbers are according to Over The Cap.

Mason Crosby’s 2022 salary cap hit

Crosby’s cap hit will rise to $4.74 million in 2022.

What are the Packers’ options?

If the Packers want to keep Crosby, they have a couple of options. One would be to just take on the cap hit of $4.74 million and move forward, finding other ways to create cap space.

If they want to keep Crosby but also lower his cap hit, an option would be to offer a short-term contract extension and push some of this year’s money into future seasons when the cap should be higher.

However, the risk there is that they would be extending Crosby’s contract after his worst season since 2012. That could leave them with a bigger dead cap hit should they decide to move on later in the year.

That said, Crosby has bounced back from bad form in the past. Assuming the field-goal blocking is improved, Crosby could get back to his best.

Prediction

While it’s certainly possible the Packers give Crosby another shot, I predict they’ll move on this offseason. Crosby turns 38 in September and struggled throughout the 2021 season. With his cap hit rising, it just feels like this will be the time Green Bay moves on at the kicker position.

The team protected J.J. Molson on the practice squad all year, in part to cover for any possible Covid-19 outbreaks, but also potentially because they have him lined up to replace Crosby and didn’t want to risk losing him.

We’ll see, but my prediction is Crosby will be replaced in 2022.