Green Bay successfully restructured Preston Smith’s contract in 2024, so anything is possible

ESPN’s Rob Demovsky, the reporter who broke the news that a potential reunion between the Green Bay Packers and cornerback Jaire Alexander was possible on Tuesday, called into ESPN Milwaukee later in the day and added more information to his report.

The first question Demovsky was going to field was obvious: Is this possible without a restructuring of Alexander’s contract, which has the cornerback making $17.5 million in cash in 2025? To that question, Demovsky made his response as clear as can be, “No.”

According to the ESPN writer, “both sides were done with each other” at the start of the offseason, with the Packers being “fed up with the fact that they didn’t know if he was going to play.” Demovsky claims most of the frustration with Alexander’s situation comes down to the coaching staff, not his teammates or how he handles himself in the locker room. Per Demovsky, the thought in the early offseason was that Alexander “wanted a change of scenery” if he were to take a pay cut.

After the draft, though, “the two sides were kind of left looking at each other like ‘what now?’” With the Packers failing to address the cornerback position before the seventh round of the 2025 draft, in part because cornerbacks were severely overdrafted on Day 2, Alexander very well might be Green Bay’s best option at outside cornerback this year. With 12 cornerbacks taken in the top 100 picks of the draft, Jalen Ramsey being available via a trade and previously cornerback-needy teams already addressing the team with free agent signings, Alexander’s best situation in the league could be sticking with the Packers this season, too, depending on the contract adjustment that the team proposes.

Contract restructures aren’t something new to the Packers. Just last offseason, the team played around with the details of defensive end Preston Smith’s contract in a way that incentivized his sack production. While Smith’s base salary was much lower than in his original deal, he actually had the opportunity to make more money in 2024 if he had hit certain sack metrics — which he didn’t. Ultimately, he was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers for a seventh-round pick at the trade deadline, a draft choice that was used on Tulane cornerback Micah Robinson.

So, will Alexander be on the team when they start the 2025 regular season? It’ll all come down to finding a middle ground on his compensation. As general manager Brian Gutekunst stated during his draft press conference, he and Alexander’s camp continue to talk weekly. While Alexander was a participant in the Packers’ virtual sessions of their organized team activities, which were not in person only because Green Bay was hosting the draft, Alexander didn’t appear in the photos that Packers.com’s Evan Siegle took of the first day of voluntary in-person workouts on Monday. Alexander will make $700,000 in the form of a workout bonus in 2025, depending on how many voluntary workouts he shows up to.

Just eight days ago, Demovsky said there was “no way” that Alexander would be back on the team in 2025. On Sunday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Silverstein stated that the Packers were still actively shopping Alexander and that the team decided in February to move on from the corner. So today’s news is certainly a shift from what was previously reported out of Green Bay.