Eight games played last season. Seventy-five million dollars.
Tucker Kraft tore his ACL in October and has not played a snap since. Green Bay just made him the third highest-paid tight end in football.
The Packers and Kraft agreed a four-year extension worth $75 million on Saturday, according to multiple U.S. reports. Performance bonuses can push it to $92 million. The signing bonus alone is $26.5 million.
That works out at $18.5 million a year. Only Trey McBride in Arizona and George Kittle in San Francisco earn more at the position. Kraft is 25.
Try it for $0.99.
A bet on a repaired knee
The front office knows the maths. Across those eight appearances, Kraft caught 32 passes for 489 yards and six touchdowns, averaging a career-best 15.3 yards per catch.
That last number is the whole case. A tight end pulling in more than 15 yards a grab is not a safety valve, he pulls safeties out of position and opens the middle for everyone else.
Three seasons in, he sits at 113 catches, 1,551 yards, 15 touchdowns. Green Bay took him 78th overall in 2023 out of South Dakota State. A third-round pick priced like a franchise cornerstone inside three years.
What Green Bay is locking in before kickoff
The timing counts. Getting this done on the eve of the opener keeps contract noise out of a season where the offence leans hard on its interior targets.
For bettors, the deal says plenty about the plan. Nobody pays a tight end $18.5 million a year to block. Kraft’s reception and touchdown markets are worth a close look, with one caveat worth repeating: ACL recovery gets measured over months, not in the first two weeks of September.
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