It could not be made any clearer that the Green Bay Packers do not value UCLA's Sean Rhyan, as their actions this offseason point to Rhyan's departure after the season. It's unclear why the Packers are not satisfied with Rhyan, as he stepped up for an injury-plagued unit, but the team is moving forward.
This goes all the way back to the NFL Combine when I asked Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst about his offensive line entering 2025.
"Yeah, I think we've done, and we were talking a little bit about this earlier, we've always focused on versatility with our offensive linemen, whether it be because of injury or because we have players that leave," Gutekunst said.
"We feel really good about the flexibility of our guys to play multiple spots and try to get the best five on the field. So, it's always impactful, but at the same time I feel really good about our group right now."
That should've given Rhyan some job security. Wrong. Soon after those words were said, the Packers signed guard Aaron Banks to a four-year, $77 million deal.
So, that means Banks and Elgton Jenkins will be the guard and center, as Jordan Mordan is expected to play Rhyan's position of right guard.
Morgan is a first-round pick, the Packers have two high caliber tackles, they drafted two more tackles as backups, and Rhyan is on the last year of his deal.
If his impending benching wasn't worse, Rhyan's salary was decreased by $2 million because he didn't play enough snaps last season. How many did he miss? Two. Two snaps.
In a report by Pro Football Talk's Michael David Smith, he detailed what the Packers did with Rhyan's contract.
"Rhyan was a 2022 third-round draft pick, which means he’s heading into the fourth and final year of his rookie contracts," Smith wrote. "For players drafted in Rounds 3-7, the salaries in their fourth seasons are influenced significantly by meeting certain performance incentives. In the case of Rhyan, his $1.364 million base salary would have increased to $3.406 million if he had played 35 percent of the Packers’ offensive snaps over his first three seasons.
"But Rhyan didn’t play 35 percent of snaps. He played in 34.96 percent of snaps, or 1,144 of the Packers’ 3,272 offensive snaps in his first three seasons. If he had been on the field for just two more offensive plays at any point in his first three NFL seasons, that would have bumped him up to 35.02 percent of snaps and he would have seen his pay raise by $2.042 million.
"Rhyan’s agent, Cameron Foster, told Rob Demovsky of ESPN that he consulted an online database of snap counts and thought Rhyan had reached the 35 percent threshold, but that both the NFL and the NFL Players Association told him the official numbers put Rhayn at two snaps short.
"[We had] him at 35% of snaps exactly,” Foster said. “However, the NFL and NFLPA both had him just under. So, per the Packers, they are not giving him the escalator. We are pretty disappointed about it for sure.”
Need we say anymore?
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