According to Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wide receiver Christian Watson’s contract extension with the Green Bay Packers includes some interesting details. First of all, he has a $1.1 million base salary this year and will receive a $6.07 million signing bonus, which will bring his 2025 cash flow to $7.17 million.
In 2026, his base salary will be $3.425 million, and he will receive $1.825 million in pre-game roster bonuses. With that math, he will be making an extra $107,353 for every game that he’s active for next year.
As far as the accounting of that per-game roster bonus goes on the salary cap, it will depend on how many games he plays in 2025. From the NFL’s point of view, every game that Watson plays in 2025 will add a game bonus that will be “likely to be earned” for the 2026 season. So if Watson is activated from the physically unable to perform list in Week 6 and begins to play immediately in 2025, then he has the potential for 13 of those 17 $107,353 bonuses to be credited as “likely to be earned,” which means that they would count against the Packers’ salary cap throughout 2026, including in the offseason.
Beyond the roster bonuses, Watson also has $2.25 million in incentives in his contract that could be paid to him in 2026. The details of those incentives have yet to be announced, but they’re likely tied to production or accolades, as the roster bonuses already address availability.
The one-year extension also includes three void years at the end of the contract, too, which will stretch that $6.07 million signing bonus to five $1.21 million cap charges from 2025 to 2029.
Pinning down cap hits for Watson in 2026 is…really tricky considering how much of the deal is incentives-based. His cap hit will vary drastically depending on whether these incentives are considered “likely to be earned” or “not likely to be earned” based on what Watson does in 2025.
What you really need to know is that the one-year extension has a max value of $13.5 million, with $1.2 million of that being credited to the Packers’ 2025 salary cap and $3.6 million will be credited to Green Bay after the 2026 season — be it all at once with Watson leaving the team in free agency in 2027 or at $1.2 million per year (through 2029) if he signs a multi-year extension beyond the 2026 season.
At the absolute most, if Watson plays 13 games this year and hits all of the incentives that he would get paid for achieving in 2026, then his max cap hit would be something around $8.3 million next year. If, for some reason, he didn’t play a single game in 2025, turning all of those pre-game roster bonuses and incentives into “not likely to be earned,” then he would enter next year with about a $4.6 million cap hit.
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