Since Greg Bedard (R.I.P.) left the Journal Sentinel to cover the New England Patriots and then become one of fat man, nugget-giver Peter King’s minions, Bob McGinn has become the inside man at that rag for the Green Bay Packers.
Personally, I think the guy might be senile, but he has had his moments. Had might be the operative word there…
That preface was necessary because McGinn randomly bestowed the knowledge on us this afternoon that he thought the Green Bay Packers were going to re-sign T.J. Lang and now he doesn’t.
For months I thought Packers would re-sign G T.J. Lang. Now I think they'll let him walk and save the money … for what, who knows?
— Bob McGinn (@BobMcGinn) March 6, 2017
We’ve actually been going the other way… slightly.
We knew Lang wasn’t a priority for the Packers prior to last season. He was only in the middle of our free agent priority list. We fully expected some offensive-line-poor team like the Vikings to throw more money at Lang than the Packers are willing to spend.
But look, here are the facts. The Packers have around $40 million in salary cap space available.
Nick Perry will command at least $10 million of it. A No. 1 corner — of which the Packers better damn well go out and get because, if you haven’t noticed, they don’t have one since cutting Sam Shields — may be another $10 million. Lang, probably $8 million if the Packers are lucky.
That salary cap space is getting tight, but… we would think you can bring back Jared Cook and Eddie Lacy with what’s left.
I mean, if these guys were smart, they’d go ask some guys to renegotiate, create more flexibility.
Hey, maybe none of this will happen. We knew the Packers didn’t value the guard position when they released Josh Sitton. They were right, at least in that instance. It didn’t matter.
We’d love to have T.J. Lang back in 2017, but it’s not a necessity. We still do think they’ll explore it. Whether they succeed or not is another question.