12:19pm: The Packers have officially announced their new deal with Guion.
11:21am: The extra $500K in Guion’s deal – noted below – is a Pro Bowl escalator, according to Caplan (Twitter link).
8:34am: The Packers and defensive lineman Letroy Guion have reached an agreement in principle on a three-year deal worth $11.25MM, a league source tells Adam Caplan of ESPN.com (Twitter link). The new contract agreement will lock Guion up through the 2018 season, and keeps him from hitting the open market next month. He had been eligible for unrestricted free agency this winter.
Guion, 28, started all 16 regular season contests as the Packers’ nose tackle in 2014, establishing new career highs in tackles (41) and sacks (3.5). He wasn’t a full-time starter in 2015, however, appearing in 381 defensive snaps in 13 games. He picked up 20 tackles, but didn’t record a sack.
The veteran defensive lineman was suspended for the first three games in 2015 due to a violation of the NFL’s substance abuse policy. Guion was arrested last February when police found 357 grams of marijuana and an unloaded gun in his truck. The case was settled in March when Guion accepted a plea deal, at which point the Packers re-signed him to a one-year contract that ended up being worth about $2.5MM.
While we’ll have to wait for the full details of this new contract to come out, it looks like Guion got a little more security than he did on his previous contracts with Green Bay. His per-year salary also gets a bump — assuming $11.25MM is the base value of the new pact, that’s an average of $3.75MM annually. Guion could also earn up to $500K in incentives on the deal, per Rob Demovsky of ESPN.com.
With Guion locked up, the Packers will now have to decide whether or not they’ll also re-sign B.J. Raji, whose contract expires this offseason as well. Raji, who took over as the club’s regular nose tackle in 2015, played more snaps than Guion, but he placed just 97th out of 123 qualified interior defenders in Pro Football Focus’ rankings — PFF didn’t view Raji’s work against the run this past season as particularly strong.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Keeping our own. Hope his past issues are behind him and good O’l Ted gets some help at TE and linebacker.
Quality part of a defensive line rotation at an affordable price. He certainly would have drawn a great deal of interest on the open market, and Green Bay can ill-afford to lose DL depth.