The Green Bay Packers under the leadership of general manager Ted Thompson have consistently been one of the most financially stable franchises with respect to the NFL salary cap. The team has been shrewd with its free agent signings (often to fans’ consternation), but they have taken on few bad investments. Furthermore, cap guru Russ Ball has helped develop contract structures that limit the Packers’ commitments if a contract were not to work out in a beneficial way for the team.
One way of assessing how well a team has made its financial investments is by looking at how much dead money a team carries against its salary cap.