Perry Has One Million Reasons to Stay Healthy

The details of Nick Perry’s contract are finally available and the Green Bay Packers have protected themselves against injury to a degree.

Of Perry’s $5 million deal for 2016, $1 million is tied to his availability. Perry has 16 $62,500 per game roster bonuses. If he isn’t on the active roster, he doesn’t earn that money.

That would be the case if Perry were injured, something that’s happened 18 times in his first four years in the league.

Frankly, we are surprised those bonuses don’t make up a greater portion of Perry’s contract. As it is, even if he didn’t play in a single game in 2016 because of injury, the Packers will still pay Perry $4 million.

That $4 million comes via a $2.3 million base salary, a $1.5 million signing bonus and a $200,000 workout bonus.

In his defense, Perry has been somewhat healthy the past two seasons. He missed just one game in 2014 and two in 2015. However, many of those games were played at less than full strength.

Perry has been slowed by a shoulder injury each of the past two seasons. Now he actually has incentive to play when he’s injured.

We’d love to see a fully-healthy Perry play an entire season like he played in last season’s playoffs (8 tackles, 3.5 sacks, 1 forced fumble). If he does that, he’ll be a bargain at $5 million.

But look, we’ll believe that’s possible when we actually see it.