David Bakhtiari is $17.5 million gamble for Packers
GREEN BAY, Wisconsin − When David Bakhtiari was a late-morning scratch from the Green Bay Packers’ Week 7 game at Washington last season, it very much looked like his chances of playing with the Packers beyond 2022 were somewhere around zero.
Bakhtiari was suffering from recurring knee issues dating to a torn ACL in December 2020, and nearly two years later, when he was unable to play against Washington after going through warm-ups, it was hard to see how he’d be back with the Packers in 2023.
He’d had three knee surgeries, including ACL reconstruction, between January 2021 and the spring of ’22. Being a scratch against Washington meant he’d missed 22 of 27 games, playoffs included, since the end of the 2020 regular season.
Add his $17.5 million in salary and bonuses due for ’23 on top of the Packers’ severe salary-cap constraints, and it seemed a given that 2022 would be Bakhtiari’s last season as the Packers’ left tackle. That’s just too much money to pay a player whose status was so shaky there’d be no knowing whether he was available each week until he got through warm-ups on game day. You just can’t run an offense that way.
But in yet another example of the fluidity of life in the NFL, Bakhtiari then played the next five games without incident. Then, after missing only three games because of an appendectomy, he finished the season’s final two weeks back in his starting lineup without any knee issues of note.
Now here we are in mid-June of 2023, and instead of being cut in February or early March and signing with another team, Bakhtiari just finished the Packers’ offseason program as a regular participant who presumably has earned his full $700,000 workout bonus. The Packers already have paid him $15 million of his $17.5 million salary in a cap-saving contract restructure, and he’s on pace to be their starting left tackle in the opener of his 11th season with the team, barring a setback in training camp.
“I think we're over that hump and I think he kind of has an idea of what he needs to do week to week to get out there and perform at that level,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said of Bakhtiari earlier this offseason.
So what are the chances Bakhtiari’s knee will hold up as it did in the second half of last season and allow him to start all 17 games, or something close to it?
“I feel really good,” he said Wednesday after the Packers' final offseason practice. “Obviously I don’t want to jinx it or oversell anything. But I think it will show up in how much I play.”
Bakhtiari has had to change his regular-season regimen to accommodate his knee and age (he’ll be 32 in late September). He would not go into detail on the changes, though one dating back to last season obviously has been reduced time on the practice field.
Last year he had several different patterns of practice participation, ranging from not practicing all week but playing (the short week of a Thursday night game against Tennessee), to practicing on a limited basis all three days (five times, including the Washington week he missed as well as the final two games), to sitting out one practice in the week (five times), to sitting out two of the three practices (twice).
His practice days probably will end up varying week to week depending on how he’s feeling, and whether the Packers are practicing on relatively benign grass (outside) or the more wearing Field Turf (indoors), and playing on grass or turf (the Packers have five games on turf).
Also, even on days when he’s listed as a limited participant, it might mean he took few if any snaps in team drills and thus had a light load on a given day.
“It will be feel,” Bakhtiari said of his weekly practice regimen. “Obviously the better I feel the more I’ll want to do. But the training room, they’ll probably — when they talk to the coaches they’ll probably hold me back more than wanting me to do more.”
The Packers are rolling the dice by bringing back Bakhtiari at $17.5 million, but it makes sense assuming their medical staff feels good about the odds of his knee holding up for the season. They need to give Jordan Love the best chance possible to succeed, and when Bakhtiari played last season, he played well.
If they’d have cut Bakhtiari, left tackle would have shot up to a must-fill draft need for a team that already had several priority positions to augment. Now, at least going into the season, offensive line is their deepest position group. If the five starters who finished last season open this year, then Zach Tom, a starting-caliber player, will be their sixth man.
Still, there’s a pretty good chance this season will be Bakhtiari’s last with the Packers. Next year, the final year of his contract, his cap number is $40.6 million. The Packers can chop his $21.5 million in salary and bonuses off that by cutting him next offseason. Then they’d be looking for a new left tackle from among Yosh Nijman, Tom, 2022 undrafted rookie Caleb Jones or a high draft pick.
But as Bakhtiari’s return to the Packers this year shows, you never know how circumstances might change by next March. If Bakhtiari’s knee holds up, maybe he and the Packers will agree on a contract extension that will lower his cap number and still pay enough to lure him back. On the open market, teams might be leery of spending big money a player nearing his mid-30s and with his history of knee issues.
Either way, Bakhtiari has just finished his first offseason on the practice field since 2019 (2020 there was no offseason program because of the coronavirus, and the last two years he was recovering from knee surgery in the offseason.
“I was just giving it everything I could to make it work for last year,” Bakhtiari said. “It wasn’t ideal, but sometimes you’re not dealt the best hand. Now I’d say from a (knee) strength standpoint I feel very strong.”
The question is, will he still feel that way after the rigors of training camp and a 17-game season?