2024-07-22 07:55:02
Green Bay Packers defensive tackle Kenny Clark, like the rest of the veterans on the team, reported to training camp on Sunday before the team officially kicks off practices on Monday. On the eve of camp, Clark received some great news: His three-year extension with the Packers was to be finalized.
According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the former first-round pick and three-time pro bowler signed a three-year extension with Green Bay that is worth $64 million. As a reminder, Clark was due $15.5 million in base salary this season — which was the final year on the four-year extension he signed with the team back in August of 2020. Clark also carried a $27.5 million cap hit. That number is expected to decline as the team likely structured the deal in a way where he’s paid a large signing bonus on the front end, which is spread over multiple years on the salary cap, and his salaries increase year-by-year.
Rapoport also noted that Clark would receive $29 million in 2024, nearly $15 million more than he would have received by playing out the season. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Silverstein reported that Clark’s signing bonus is $17.5 million, so we can infer, assuming both reports are correct, that Clark’s salary will be close to $11.5 million this year. That would mean that his cap hit would be around the range of $26.4 million in 2024. $10.5 million of that comes from previous prorated signing bonuses, though, which means that he will have a significantly lighter cap hit in 2025. Still, that’s a cap savings of about a million dollars immediately.
Per Spotrac, that $26.4 million cap hit would rank around third in the league in 2024 among defenders — again, mostly due to converting previous salaries into signing bonuses — but Clark’s $21.4 million average per year in new money ranks just 11th among interior defensive linemen. A $17.5 million signing bonus ranks 14th.
Considering that an aggregate of 80 NFL coaches, scouts and executives ranked Clark as the ninth-best defensive tackle in football per ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler — with at least one voter placing him in the top five — that seems like a pretty good deal.
Now that Clark’s contract is out of the way, all eyes are officially on the upcoming Jordan Love extension, which will likely be the largest contract that the franchise has ever given a player. With a soft deadline placed by both sides around the start of training camp, the next 24 hours should be pretty impactful for the Packers’ quarterback of the future.
