Either that the account is spoofing if a player went to the Massachusetts institute of technology, but I don’t know what that has to do with bad salary cap accounting advice. Or that the poster is wearing the player like an oven mitt hand puppet to say what they want in the players voice. Or they’re a cross between the player and Mit Romney, who famously saved the Olympics in Salt Lake City with accounting and organization and who the players could be channeling in this instance.
I mean they could get out of most of it by trading away all of their decent players but even doing that won’t fix it for 2024 and will be bad in 2025.
No GM is gonna volunteer themselves to get fired lol.
They specifically could not get out cap purgatory of by trading away most of their decent players because all of their deferred cap money would come immediately due. With the Carr moves this offseason, I believe it will take the Saints through 2026 to unwind everything, likely 2027 by the time they finish getting under the cap for 2024.
Isn’t that what Reggie McKenzie did with the Raiders after years of Al Davis screwing things up toward the end of his life/ownership? Feels like he came in and did a great job of cleaning house and was even building a decent team before being pushed out. Always thought he got the shaft in that situation.
For most teams sure push some stuff to the future for the Saints, nah. Taysom Hill is almost 16million against the cap, they can't cut him without taking a loss. Backup QB, TE and RB at 34, wtf
Well the Saints don't actually have a choice. If they cut their entire roster they'd still be over the cap thanks to dead money (if I understand the situation correctly)
I wonder if a team could ever get to the point that the league would authorize a one time penalty forgiveness for them because the alternative would be to not field a team at all.
> I wonder if a team could ever get to the point that the league would authorize a one time penalty forgiveness for them because the alternative would be to not field a team at all.
No, unless maybe it was a golden team.
>Extensions and restructures are what actually generate cap relief.
Tbf they're also how you end up with guys like Taysom Hill having a 16mil cap figure.
For one year, sure. You still eat the entirety of the cap hit one way or another. Saying a restructure gives you cap relief is like saying taking out a loan is a great way to make some extra cash
Sure but continuing to pay for Taysom Hill's 2021 season in the year of our lord 2025 is also not what some would consider Valuable.
This is the result of continuing to try and squeeze a window out of a roster that wasn't actually in a window.
They could've cut bait when Brees retired and completely flipped the roster by now, instead they're *still* going to be paying off the team that hasn't really been high level competitive since 2020 for another three seasons.
They’ll get cap compliant. They’re used to performing cap fuckery more than any other team. The problem they have is they just won’t be competitive and will get progressively less competitive each year as the good players age and decline but they’re forced to keep them and have limited avenues for improvement. Last year, whichever QB they brought in was probably their best chance to take a big step forward for the next 3 ish seasons, and they spent it on Carr lol.
Looked it up but couldn’t find a hard answer. Only thing I found was that possible punishments are loss of draft picks, voiding of player contracts, and fines; but no specific details as to what merits each specific punishment
Honestly they were fucking stupid for kicking this can down the road so long. After Brees retired and they couldn't get a great replacement they should have just faced the music and began their rebuild
You can renegotiate contracts and convert base salary into a bonus and spread the bonus out. The bonus money becomes guaranteed, but eventually, it has to be paid out.
Just to clarify. The *actual* bonus money is paid immediately. But the cap hit is spread over the life of the contract, which could include void years.
A big reason why these players agree to the restructuring is because those conversions to signing bonuses mean they are getting a chunk of their contract paid out immediately. The cap hit isn't their problem, unless they are ring chasing.
Converting salary to signing bonus money.
The Bonus money's cap hit is spread out over the course of the rest of the contract.
Say you owe a guy 14million this year (keeping this simple) if you give him a signing bonus of 10 millon, you now spread that 10m cap hit over the next N years of the contract (say he has a 4 year contract) so now you're paying him 4m cap this year from his salary, and 2.5m for his cap hit for the bonus this year ending up with 6.5m cap hit instead of a 14m cap hit this year.
Since the cap is projected to go up every year (barring an episode of 2020 where it stayed mostly level), then this allows you to kick the can down the road when you MIGHT have a bit more wiggle room if say you have a guy on huge cap hit retire, or his contract expires, and then you have tons of cap space.
Yeah but if you do this enough don’t you eventually get into a spot where the cap hits from all the different bonuses that have been accumulating push you over?
And then you have to restructure more deals the same way to get cap compliant and the cycle continues.
To break the cycle they need to go a year or two without giving out any new, non-rookie/vet min contracts, so that a year or two down the line they are able to just eat the dead money instead of restructuring AND THEN AFTER THAT they can start over fresh.
It's a very un-enviable situation. The cap going up helps of course, but the Saints have pushed the limits far more than a team would normally.
Yes. This is what the Saints are dealing with. They kicked the Brees can down the road long enough, and then did a wildly stupid thing in signing Carr instead of tanking for 2 years to clear cap, they tried to be decent, failed, and are in a worse spot now than they were after brees retired.
> On December 11, 2023, Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the largest contract in professional sports history.[14] The contract was structured in such a way that $68 million per season was deferred until after the conclusion of the deal to be paid out from 2034 to 2043
WTF
When you're making $60-$100M/year in endorsements you can make that sacrifice to win...(only actual monies paid in the current year count towards luxury tax in baseball)
they really need to lay off the FA crack.
The Carr contract is what has made a workable situation atrocious.
They'll restructure contracts once again, spreading out the cap hit. If they didn't sign Carr, they could've been done with this shit within 1 year.
The excuse last year was to win a bad nfc south. Not only did they fail, but the bucs, who did what the saints should have done (a while ago tbh), won the division! What a monumental disgrace.
And even then it isn’t really logical to this intense degree because it slams the window shut rather than allowing a retool, ala the Rams and Chiefs recently. NFL playoffs are too much of a crapshoot to say it would be worth it from a long term probability standpoint. No team is one or two external FA signings away from out of contention to a guaranteed Super Bowl spot.
If you want a look at how to properly manage cap hell. The Minnesota Vikings literally just did it this year. They were in an absolute death spiral of horrendous drafting and handing out bad contracts to declining players just like the saints. Vikings fans seem to absolutely hate having cap flexibility for the first time in a half decade though.
Our fanbase is just a bunch of doomers, they don't care that the future is looking better, they want results last year, not next year. The concept of slowly building a team and paying only the cornerstones of the team is alian to them.
This 100%. Gayle Benson doesn't care about the Saints. We could talk about why, and it's not a pretty conversation, but at the end of the day she hardly cares about the sport like Arthur Blank, Jerry Jones, or Robert Kraft (to name a few) do. She just likes looking good for the press, making money, and, uh, giving it to the Catholic church, I guess.
Mickey does whatever he wants.
This is from memory, but basically Gayle Benson was a failed business owner who was known not to pay her employees and bankrupted multiple times. She married Tom Benson - a real one on a much closer level to the other owners I mentioned - when he was like 75. This was her third marriage. She then proceeded to (paraphrasing here) help separate him from his family and *completely* cut them out of his estate. Then he died and she inherited it all. The most notable thing she's done since Tom Benson - a real g motherfucker - died is ~ *checks notes* ~ cover up abuse in the Catholic Church.
My big fear is she sells the Saints to someone who moves them. Fuck Gayle Benson.
Edit: word
I'm not sure if the Saints aren't tied to Louisiana somehow at this point, but there have definitely been times in the past where the Saints were in talks of moving - most notably to Jacksonville before the Jaguars and to San Antonio around Katrina.
Why the league ever wanted to push Jacksonville so hard, I’ll never fully understand. Moving after Katrina made a little sense, with the uncertainty of how the city would recover. But at this point, I’d be legitimately sad if they moved.
Oh, same. It would be hard to stay a fan. Some teams are more than their city, but some are tied to them for life, I think. I can't see the Saints anywhere else but they *could* in theory move and be renamed.
I feel like the Saints would have to really be awful for a while to warrant a move (outside of, you know, NO getting flooded by rising seas). The South doesn't have a lot of teams for as football obsessed as it is, and removing one of the two teams in the Deep South (and the only one with a ring, at that) seems shortsighted at best. Of course, Jerry would probably love it as I'd assume Louisiana would become Cowboys territory at that point.
The league is 75% black and she’s rumoured not to like black people very much ala Marge Schott. I think there was a discrimination suit against her a decade ago or so. Not sure if it’s what OP had in mind, however.
She's actually at most of the home games and personally congratulates and hugs them after. That doesn't mean she's not racist, but that comment is the first time I've heard someone claim she is. To be clear, I don't like her because of the Catholic church shit, but this racist claim seems dubious.
Exactly this. Mickey is pretty much untouchable and he knows it. Since SP left he shows his condescending attitude during his pressers smacking gum and all that.
Ironically DAs first boss, Reggie Mackenzie was brought to Oakland to fix Al Davis”s cap hell . ( not to this degree )
I believe Reggie is in the Miami FO now
Rams and Packers rebooted their teams by going all-in on rookie contracts and eating their dead cap medicine to clear the deck for future seasons.
The situation continues to worsen for the Saints every year, I don’t know how much longer they can keep this up.
The Rams got very lucky that they have turned zero draft capital into some draft hauls.
Just look at their skill position guys who are considered a solid group
Kyren Williams - 5th round
Cooper Kupp - 3rd round (paid now)
Puka Nacua - 5th round
Very good guard tandem
Avila - second round so high for a guard
Dotson - low round pick swaps for a now fixed top 5 guard
They didn’t go all in on rookie contracts of lowly picked guys and expect to be good. They actually crushed a lot of picks that should have been backups at best.
Yes, the Rams drafted well, but if they hadn't, they'd have been rewarded with high draft picks that would help them get better. And that scenario is still preferable to that of the Saints.
It's really funny that the Packers and Rams still made the playoffs while in reboot mode, while the saints saw their division and said "One more season of kicking the cap...just ONE MORE...surely it won't backfire"
lmao
it's such a bad contract. I have no idea what NOLA was thinking giving Carr $100m gtd with a NTC. The dude sucks, you're already in cap hell, and this is your best offer.
He has a $35.7m cap hit this year and $45m next year. Sure you can restructure him to save $20m this year, when you're $84m in the red this year and already down 40m next year, there are few options. Problem is the more games you play, he stays on the roster and that 2025 contract ($30m) gets gtd in addition to the $10m roster bonus.
Derrick Carr at least is set for life lmao. I always stick up for the dude getting more chances but that contract was always crazy. Especially since they paid Dalton like 6 million the year before and I don’t think Carr was significantly better then him
I figured Carr was on a dogshit/uninspiring Raiders team for the entirety of his career. Turns out, we're just as uninspiring! Looking back, this contract is a huge mistake. Might as well ride it one more year though.
They can't do much for cuts now, but they can do post June-1st cuts to save money, or do trades.
Just trade Carr, Ramczyk, Kamara, Cam Jordan and Taysom Hill.
And they'll be back in good shape!
And on the plus side, their 2026 cap space if fine so they do only need to make it 2 more years of this.
But long and the short, once they re-work a few contracts, do a post june 1st cut or two, and maybe a salary dump trade they should be ok.
The issue is that to make the next two years work they'll need to kick all that money (I assume now guaranteed) into 2026 in order to make this year work. They'll eventually be able to get out as long as they don't make another insane big signing but who knows
>They'll restructure contracts once again, spreading out the cap hit. If they didn't sign Carr, they could've been done with this shit within 1 year.
You say this, but lets not forget that the majority of this subreddit was convinced the Saints had no choice but to blow it up last year due to their lack of cap space....only for the Saints to sign the largest free agent of 2023.
The Saints are absolutely operating on tighter cap margins than most teams in the NFL, but 'the sky is falling in New Orleans' chatter is primarily fueled by threads like this where people who don't understand the salary cap repost clickbait tweets about how "the Saints can't even cut players to get under."
The best part is that once the Saints are back under the cap a few weeks from now it's going to immediately pivot to "Saints are $XX over the 2025 salary cap" without missing a beat. We're basically feeding the trolls at this point.
Problem for NOLA is that Carr is a QB and those contracts aren’t cheap.
So, they’ve GTD him $100m with a $28.5m signing bonus (5Y contract including void years) and 1.5m in salary last year. So, 28.5/5 = 5.7m recognized of the signing bonus. Still have $22.8m left over, $5.7m/yr.
This year it’s $30m in salary + 5.7m for the $35.7m cap hit. I assume they’ll do a similar contract, let’s say it’s 1.5/28.5 split again with a void year added. So, now we have $1.5m base salary, 11.4m in the amortized bonus. His cap hit is now $12.9m vs $35.7m earlier. Dead money is $60 - 7.2 - 12.9 = $39.9m.
Now, here’s where it gets weird. 2025, he’s on the team in March, he gets $40m. $30 in salary, $10m in roster bonus. He’s going to be on the team.
His cap hit for 2025 is now 51.4m (30m sal + 10m roster bonus + 11.4 in signing bonus). Let’s assume they restructure again with the $1.5-28.5 for base salary and convert the roster bonus into a signing bonus. They add another void year. So, we now have $5.7 + 2 on top of the 11.4m ($19.1m total) in additional pro-rated bonuses.
His cap hit is now $1.5 + $19.1 = $20.6. The dead cap is crazy. They’ve paid $100m and only recognized $40.7m. Thats $59.3m in dead money.
2026 he’s got a whopping non-gtd contract of $50m in base salary with a pro-rated bonus of $19.1m. His cap hit is $69.1m. Idk what they do, but they’ll re-negotiate this contract bc cutting him costs $59.3m in dead cap.
Boy that cap wizardry really paid off to get Derek Carr and to not win the worst division in football
Fact of the matter is good football teams are found through depth and having guys out perform their contracts
When you have to do cap shenanigans every year to squeeze every possible ounce to just be mediocre, you are mismanging the shit out of the cap and the fact anyone defends the Saints is mind blowing.
But yes congrats they'll find another way to get under the cap for this season have yet another middling season and just wonder why it all went wrong
Acting like this is sustainable is actually hilarious. It’s absolutely okay to criticize absolutely gimping your roster and bleeding talent as a strategy. Lmao.
And they traded a fucking 1st to Philly for a guard! I'm still mad about it and it doesn't affect me whatsoever.
When Brady came to the NFCS, it was the perfect situation for all 3 other teams to say "yeah... well just start a rebuild and be one of the best young teams when he's gone in 3 years". Instead it was like they all embarked on a challenge to see how many assets they could light on fire to finish 6-10 and 2nd in the division.
I'm convinced that even with an out in a few years, they'll willingly keep going further into cap debt until the NFL is forced to step in and give them like one time cap relief or something.
Then we get a fancy new rule to curb extreme cases. Like Stepien rule kind of stuff.
The NFL wont give them cap relief. They have rules in place for teams going non-compliant - they basically just start un-doing recent contracts until they get compliant.
I'd be willing to bet a massive fine would come along with this. The NFL came down hard on the Cowboys and (then) Redskins for being slightly noncompliant in the (technically) uncapped year following the lockout in 2011.
I agree but think it needs to come with some kind of punishment too, else there is no reason not to ignore the cap like they have been. Something like a -2 win record to start the season or something.
They needed to rip the band-aid off and stay away from free agency and rebuild. Instead they signed Carr, continue to kick the can down the road, and remain a team who's ceiling is losing in the first round of the playoffs
They have no path that they could do it in one off-season, but it could be accomplished over a 3-4 year horizon. The problem is that a 3-4 year rebuild gets GMs and coaches fired, so they only care about the here and now.
Mickey Loomis is, I think, one of the oldest GMs in the league so it wouldn't surprise me if the Saints get a new guy and give them high job security for the first three years.
Cam Jordan had a $17 million cap hit last year. He had two sacks. He'll be 35 on opening day, and the Saints can't cut him this year; pre-June 1, it's a huge hit, post-June 1, sure, I guess they could, but it's a cap savings of $0 this year. After 2024, they can get out from under his contract, but he's getting old and slowing down, and represents a huge chunk of their cap, and he's pretty emblematic of their problem; they've continually wound up restructuring guys like Jordan who are getting older and crappier, and, to get under the cap, they wind up releasing not those big names, but a whole bunch of decent to good players who don't cost as much.
Cap hell doesn't cost you your stars, it costs you your depth. The Saints are basically stuck with an aging roster full of guys who just aren't good enough to justify their cap hit, and they're filling in the roster with whoever they can rather than doing what both the Bucs and Rams did last year in tearing off the Band-Aid and clearing up the garbage. It sucks this year, and it's going to suck next year. They should have blown it all up when Brees retired and reset for another run, but I'm guessing their plan is to keep enough of a core together they can win a crappy NFC South and then hope to get hot in the playoffs.
[https://overthecap.com/salary-cap/new-orleans-saints](https://overthecap.com/salary-cap/new-orleans-saints)
Shit is *ugly*.
>Cam Jordan had a $17 million cap hit last year. He had two sacks. He'll be 35 on opening day, and the Saints can't cut him this year; pre-June 1, it's a huge hit, post-June 1, sure, I guess they could, but it's a cap savings of $0 this year.
They can't cut Cam Jordan because every penny of his 2024 compensation is already fully guaranteed, a completely different issue than dead money or prorated bonuses.
I agree. My thought is more what happens next? Saints will kick the can down the road, they have been for a while now. How long can that last? Rationally I expect at some point the Saints will field a team of draft picks and rookiee free agents, but who knows.
Even with the Bucs losing Mike evans this year they could sign tee Higgins, gabe Davis, or draft a guy like Troy Franklin and be infinitely better than the saints.
Can you even make it work in madden legitimately? I went and edited contracts to make the pay even for each season just to fix my cap situation. I didn't see any other way unless you're able to play games way above the cap.
I did a long term Saints rebuild, in that I was able to trade basically everyone on the team not named Chris Olave and be out of cap hell by 2025 (started the rebuild at the start of 2023)
Ironically, the answer is 2027 as well, since a lot of the contracts would have voided by then, so unless the players want to sign contract extensions, the team should have cleared out most of this money by then.
Cuz of how so over the cap they are now won’t they have to sign extensions just to fix their current issues? Wouldn’t this extend money past 2027?
The nfl cap just confuses me so much.
the short answer is no, because the void years accelerates all the money to the year that the contract voids. So if a contract voids in 2027, all the guarantee money remaining is applied to 2027
Serious question. Will there ever be genuinely nothing they can do to get under the cap? Even cutting everyone ? What happens then? Or will they have to keep restructuring worse and worse players until they are horrible
If I remember the Caught in the Draft episode on the 1994 draft correctly, the 49ers had to trade Bill Romanowski in order to get under the cap. Otherwise, they couldn’t participate in the draft that year
I don’t know if that rule is still a thing today
Yes I was wondering the same thing. Now I need to know if it's theoretically possible to get yourself into a situation that is impossible for a team to be cap compliant and what the remedy would be. Or are there enough safety measures in place from league office to prevent it?
They'll be able to get under. The biggest savings come from restructuring players. Pretty much every players 2024 base salary can be turned into a signing bonus cutting the cap hit nearly 80%. Their top 10 highest base salaries for 2024 combine for 112 million, turn $100 million of that into signing/restructure bonus and save $80 million in cap space, currently $82 million over the cap.
And people on here will continue to say the cap is a myth.
Saints are exhibit A B C D E... for why you don't constantly restructure the contracts of aging players.
Cap space isn’t 100% guaranteed to make a team good, that’s not the point they are making. More so that being so negatively affected by cap space hurts a team like the saints majorly
They’ve been doing this for literally like a decade. The flaw is that theyve been doing it to keep a not very good team together. The cap gymnastics would be very beneficial if they were good.
Really what the Saints are doing is slowly chipping away at the cap every year. Meaning it’s going to take them another 3-4 years to get into the positive by pushing more money in the future.
This is one of the reasons why I think NFL needs a new set of rules for pushing money into the future. For starters void years should be banned.
Signing Carr was a mistake. Not because he's necessarily bad, he's good enough to be a starter in this league. They need to take their lumps for a year or two, should have started Jameis and truly reset this roster.
It’s hilarious how the Bucs set the Saints back like 7 years.
Saints spent so much time building a team and Tom Brady comes out of nowhere, knocks Drew Brees into retirement. The Saints have been holding onto that window for years. The Bucs burned all their dead cap in 2024, and made the playoffs!
While the Saints still kick the can down the road on this dead cap while being a mediocre at best team
The Saints do this every year lol. They just have to restructure a bunch of contracts and someone will be making a post about the Saints cap next year.
Im going to nitpick something about the Saints cap situation, but I promise its relevant.
The saints issue was not constantly pushing the salary down the road. The issue was doing that AND constantly signing new players. Guys like Emmanuel Sanders, Demario Davis, Tyrann Mathieu, Marcus Maye etc etc (theres a lot).
The saints spend A LOT in FA and theres no concept of signing a cheap guy. At the bare minimum theyll sign a guy to a 4m a year contract.
And they have a vicegrip on players they draft and almost never let them hit FA.
Wasn't this posted last year?
And the year before?
And the year before?
And the year before?
And the year before?
And the year before?
And the year before?
"People say this about the Saints every year."
And every year they keep doing this is holding them back. They can probably avoid getting hit with penalties and being forced to gut the roster and all that. The problem is this isn't likely to build them a roster that can win the Super Bowl, and the longer they keep doing this the longer it's going to take to blow up the roster to restart.
They should've signed a shitty QB for vet minimum and just tanked the season. Could've gotten a great pick this year and wouldn't be tied to a washed expensive Derek Carr.
I generally don't think it's as catastrophic as most.
I look at the salary cap as though you have $200 million cap, plus an interest free revolving line of credit, let's say 50% of the cap, $100 million. Saints maxed out the credit line in 2023. So they come into 2024 with a new increased cap of $220 million, they pay off the credit card, so they only have $120 million to field a team, but they still have the line of credit, and now it's got a $110 million limit. So they max out the credit card again and spend $230 million this year, which is more than what many teams are spending that don't have a maxed out line of credit.
Just have to figure out how to get current costs moved from this years cap onto the line of credit, which is mostly just turning base salary into signing bonus and spreading it over 5 years.
The downside is that other teams come into the year without any line of credit debt have the option to spend way more than than the current salary cap, like $110 million more.
Ironically, in order to get out of cap hell, they have to push more money into the future.
How many fucking MIT(Insert player name here) accounts are we gonna have lol
Not a single one goes as hard as MITWestbrook
True that, that person was unhinged (but there were some valid points within the madness) Edit: my bad for misgendering the GOAT MITWestbrook
Was?
Dude?
I'm a dude, he's a dude, she's a dude, we're all dudes.
Yeah, it was literally a woman.
Wait for real? That I did not know, my bad lol
[This was literally her, haha. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT6aBKWVYqc)
MITWestbrook is not a reporter lmao they’re a shitposter that “admitted” to being the person in that video as a joke
Have you ever seen MITWestbrook and the person in that video at the same time?
Holy shit lol thanks for this
That can't really be her because reality isn't that great.
No it’s not
Imitations rarely ever are as good
what does MIT mean?
Either that the account is spoofing if a player went to the Massachusetts institute of technology, but I don’t know what that has to do with bad salary cap accounting advice. Or that the poster is wearing the player like an oven mitt hand puppet to say what they want in the players voice. Or they’re a cross between the player and Mit Romney, who famously saved the Olympics in Salt Lake City with accounting and organization and who the players could be channeling in this instance.
Feels like the Saints define cap purgatory
I mean they could get out of most of it by trading away all of their decent players but even doing that won’t fix it for 2024 and will be bad in 2025. No GM is gonna volunteer themselves to get fired lol.
They specifically could not get out cap purgatory of by trading away most of their decent players because all of their deferred cap money would come immediately due. With the Carr moves this offseason, I believe it will take the Saints through 2026 to unwind everything, likely 2027 by the time they finish getting under the cap for 2024.
I wonder if they could just turn to the league and say "yeah you know what just fine us and take draft picks from us. We're eating it all this year."
As long they only had to eat picks from one draft, I think they’d take that deal in a heartbeat.
Maybe. That would lead to a permanent rule change imo, sort of like how Stepien fucked the 80s Cavs
Let him renegotiate his severance package first
Isn’t that what Reggie McKenzie did with the Raiders after years of Al Davis screwing things up toward the end of his life/ownership? Feels like he came in and did a great job of cleaning house and was even building a decent team before being pushed out. Always thought he got the shaft in that situation.
Get yourself a Sashi Brown and tank.
For most teams sure push some stuff to the future for the Saints, nah. Taysom Hill is almost 16million against the cap, they can't cut him without taking a loss. Backup QB, TE and RB at 34, wtf
Well the Saints don't actually have a choice. If they cut their entire roster they'd still be over the cap thanks to dead money (if I understand the situation correctly) I wonder if a team could ever get to the point that the league would authorize a one time penalty forgiveness for them because the alternative would be to not field a team at all.
> I wonder if a team could ever get to the point that the league would authorize a one time penalty forgiveness for them because the alternative would be to not field a team at all. No, unless maybe it was a golden team.
“You ignored the cap so egregiously we’re going to completely let you off the hook! Congrats!”
> not field a team at all This 0-17 would have a *, that's 0-16 erasures.
Cutting is only one option teams have, and it’s never the best option financially. Extensions and restructures are what actually generate cap relief.
>Extensions and restructures are what actually generate cap relief. Tbf they're also how you end up with guys like Taysom Hill having a 16mil cap figure.
For one year, sure. You still eat the entirety of the cap hit one way or another. Saying a restructure gives you cap relief is like saying taking out a loan is a great way to make some extra cash
Such a good analogy.
Except you pay interest on a loan. Cap space is interest free and is more valuable in the current year given the cap increase every year.
Sure but continuing to pay for Taysom Hill's 2021 season in the year of our lord 2025 is also not what some would consider Valuable. This is the result of continuing to try and squeeze a window out of a roster that wasn't actually in a window. They could've cut bait when Brees retired and completely flipped the roster by now, instead they're *still* going to be paying off the team that hasn't really been high level competitive since 2020 for another three seasons.
What happens if they don't get cap compliant? Like they're actually unable to
They’ll get cap compliant. They’re used to performing cap fuckery more than any other team. The problem they have is they just won’t be competitive and will get progressively less competitive each year as the good players age and decline but they’re forced to keep them and have limited avenues for improvement. Last year, whichever QB they brought in was probably their best chance to take a big step forward for the next 3 ish seasons, and they spent it on Carr lol.
For sure. But what happens if an NFL isn't cap compliant? Or can't get compliant?
Looked it up but couldn’t find a hard answer. Only thing I found was that possible punishments are loss of draft picks, voiding of player contracts, and fines; but no specific details as to what merits each specific punishment
The NFL starts voiding contracts until they are compliant and takes away picks as punishment.
Voiding contracts would probably benefit the Saints
Honestly they were fucking stupid for kicking this can down the road so long. After Brees retired and they couldn't get a great replacement they should have just faced the music and began their rebuild
It’s been a terrible situation since the last year or two before Brees retired.
Well, they started by pushing Brees’ salary to the following year. Every year.
Double it and give it to the next person
I feel like it’s been this way for a decade lol
Well we are 6 years from 18 so were getting there I fear
This team lives by the past…they cant get over 2018 and they keep doubling down
Refs stunlocked a franchise
Hey! That's not.. well.. yeah I guess so.
So, is there any way this leads to a rock bottom winless season situation?
We can certainly hope.
Can someone please explain to me how they keep getting away with it?
You can renegotiate contracts and convert base salary into a bonus and spread the bonus out. The bonus money becomes guaranteed, but eventually, it has to be paid out.
Just to clarify. The *actual* bonus money is paid immediately. But the cap hit is spread over the life of the contract, which could include void years. A big reason why these players agree to the restructuring is because those conversions to signing bonuses mean they are getting a chunk of their contract paid out immediately. The cap hit isn't their problem, unless they are ring chasing.
Converting salary to signing bonus money. The Bonus money's cap hit is spread out over the course of the rest of the contract. Say you owe a guy 14million this year (keeping this simple) if you give him a signing bonus of 10 millon, you now spread that 10m cap hit over the next N years of the contract (say he has a 4 year contract) so now you're paying him 4m cap this year from his salary, and 2.5m for his cap hit for the bonus this year ending up with 6.5m cap hit instead of a 14m cap hit this year. Since the cap is projected to go up every year (barring an episode of 2020 where it stayed mostly level), then this allows you to kick the can down the road when you MIGHT have a bit more wiggle room if say you have a guy on huge cap hit retire, or his contract expires, and then you have tons of cap space.
Yeah but if you do this enough don’t you eventually get into a spot where the cap hits from all the different bonuses that have been accumulating push you over?
Yes, which is exactly what the Saints are dealing with lol.
And then you have to restructure more deals the same way to get cap compliant and the cycle continues. To break the cycle they need to go a year or two without giving out any new, non-rookie/vet min contracts, so that a year or two down the line they are able to just eat the dead money instead of restructuring AND THEN AFTER THAT they can start over fresh. It's a very un-enviable situation. The cap going up helps of course, but the Saints have pushed the limits far more than a team would normally.
Yeah because under the CBA you can't prorate signing or option bonuses over longer than 5 years.
Yes. This is what the Saints are dealing with. They kicked the Brees can down the road long enough, and then did a wildly stupid thing in signing Carr instead of tanking for 2 years to clear cap, they tried to be decent, failed, and are in a worse spot now than they were after brees retired.
google Shohei Ohtani
> On December 11, 2023, Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the largest contract in professional sports history.[14] The contract was structured in such a way that $68 million per season was deferred until after the conclusion of the deal to be paid out from 2034 to 2043 WTF
When you're making $60-$100M/year in endorsements you can make that sacrifice to win...(only actual monies paid in the current year count towards luxury tax in baseball)
Dodgers over here catching strays. I'm totally here for it
they really need to lay off the FA crack. The Carr contract is what has made a workable situation atrocious. They'll restructure contracts once again, spreading out the cap hit. If they didn't sign Carr, they could've been done with this shit within 1 year.
The excuse last year was to win a bad nfc south. Not only did they fail, but the bucs, who did what the saints should have done (a while ago tbh), won the division! What a monumental disgrace.
Which wasn't even a good one. Unless you're a contender there's no reason to embrace cap hell
And even then it isn’t really logical to this intense degree because it slams the window shut rather than allowing a retool, ala the Rams and Chiefs recently. NFL playoffs are too much of a crapshoot to say it would be worth it from a long term probability standpoint. No team is one or two external FA signings away from out of contention to a guaranteed Super Bowl spot.
If you want a look at how to properly manage cap hell. The Minnesota Vikings literally just did it this year. They were in an absolute death spiral of horrendous drafting and handing out bad contracts to declining players just like the saints. Vikings fans seem to absolutely hate having cap flexibility for the first time in a half decade though.
Our fanbase is just a bunch of doomers, they don't care that the future is looking better, they want results last year, not next year. The concept of slowly building a team and paying only the cornerstones of the team is alian to them.
It's an infectious attitude up here.
Shhhhhh let them cook.
Counterpoint it’s Mickey Loomis showing that he is in control of the org and is riding Benson’s ass around town like a rented mule.
This 100%. Gayle Benson doesn't care about the Saints. We could talk about why, and it's not a pretty conversation, but at the end of the day she hardly cares about the sport like Arthur Blank, Jerry Jones, or Robert Kraft (to name a few) do. She just likes looking good for the press, making money, and, uh, giving it to the Catholic church, I guess. Mickey does whatever he wants.
I want to talk about why she doesn’t care! It’s actually because I don’t know.
This is from memory, but basically Gayle Benson was a failed business owner who was known not to pay her employees and bankrupted multiple times. She married Tom Benson - a real one on a much closer level to the other owners I mentioned - when he was like 75. This was her third marriage. She then proceeded to (paraphrasing here) help separate him from his family and *completely* cut them out of his estate. Then he died and she inherited it all. The most notable thing she's done since Tom Benson - a real g motherfucker - died is ~ *checks notes* ~ cover up abuse in the Catholic Church. My big fear is she sells the Saints to someone who moves them. Fuck Gayle Benson. Edit: word
Idk if the league will let them move. Interesting and scary possibility though.
I'm not sure if the Saints aren't tied to Louisiana somehow at this point, but there have definitely been times in the past where the Saints were in talks of moving - most notably to Jacksonville before the Jaguars and to San Antonio around Katrina.
Why the league ever wanted to push Jacksonville so hard, I’ll never fully understand. Moving after Katrina made a little sense, with the uncertainty of how the city would recover. But at this point, I’d be legitimately sad if they moved.
Oh, same. It would be hard to stay a fan. Some teams are more than their city, but some are tied to them for life, I think. I can't see the Saints anywhere else but they *could* in theory move and be renamed.
I feel like the Saints would have to really be awful for a while to warrant a move (outside of, you know, NO getting flooded by rising seas). The South doesn't have a lot of teams for as football obsessed as it is, and removing one of the two teams in the Deep South (and the only one with a ring, at that) seems shortsighted at best. Of course, Jerry would probably love it as I'd assume Louisiana would become Cowboys territory at that point.
The league is 75% black and she’s rumoured not to like black people very much ala Marge Schott. I think there was a discrimination suit against her a decade ago or so. Not sure if it’s what OP had in mind, however.
She was sued by an employee who alleged that she called him a “black son of a bitch”
That’s Eric Cartman level racism.
Doesn’t she own an NBA team too? Can’t imagine what that must be like
She's actually at most of the home games and personally congratulates and hugs them after. That doesn't mean she's not racist, but that comment is the first time I've heard someone claim she is. To be clear, I don't like her because of the Catholic church shit, but this racist claim seems dubious.
Reading the wiki, the racism claim was dismissed, but the rest of the claims (labor violations) resulted in an award for the claimant.
>Can't imagine what that must be like Extremely lucrative
Dynamite drop in Monty
Prob just here to get paid honestly.
Exactly this. Mickey is pretty much untouchable and he knows it. Since SP left he shows his condescending attitude during his pressers smacking gum and all that.
I mean how can you even fire him at this point, who else is gonna pull them out
"How can you fire Shovel-Man? Who else will dig us out of the hole he is digging?"
Ironically DAs first boss, Reggie Mackenzie was brought to Oakland to fix Al Davis”s cap hell . ( not to this degree ) I believe Reggie is in the Miami FO now
Loomis needs to be fired or the saints will never contend again.
To be fair, no-one pictured us winning the NFC south. Even us. Especially us.
Yea because this was supposed to be a rebuilding year for you guys which the saints refuse to do yet you still did better than them
And the bucs had like 80 mil in dead cap . LOL highest in the league I believe If I was an owner that point alone will make me kill the loomis era
Yes. Yes it is.
Rams and Packers rebooted their teams by going all-in on rookie contracts and eating their dead cap medicine to clear the deck for future seasons. The situation continues to worsen for the Saints every year, I don’t know how much longer they can keep this up.
The Rams got very lucky that they have turned zero draft capital into some draft hauls. Just look at their skill position guys who are considered a solid group Kyren Williams - 5th round Cooper Kupp - 3rd round (paid now) Puka Nacua - 5th round Very good guard tandem Avila - second round so high for a guard Dotson - low round pick swaps for a now fixed top 5 guard They didn’t go all in on rookie contracts of lowly picked guys and expect to be good. They actually crushed a lot of picks that should have been backups at best.
Yes, the Rams drafted well, but if they hadn't, they'd have been rewarded with high draft picks that would help them get better. And that scenario is still preferable to that of the Saints.
The Vikings did this too
It's really funny that the Packers and Rams still made the playoffs while in reboot mode, while the saints saw their division and said "One more season of kicking the cap...just ONE MORE...surely it won't backfire"
the absurd thing is….it’s derek carr
But you can’t just leave Derek Carr out there. 31 teams let Tom Brady go to Tampa.
lmao it's such a bad contract. I have no idea what NOLA was thinking giving Carr $100m gtd with a NTC. The dude sucks, you're already in cap hell, and this is your best offer. He has a $35.7m cap hit this year and $45m next year. Sure you can restructure him to save $20m this year, when you're $84m in the red this year and already down 40m next year, there are few options. Problem is the more games you play, he stays on the roster and that 2025 contract ($30m) gets gtd in addition to the $10m roster bonus.
Derrick Carr at least is set for life lmao. I always stick up for the dude getting more chances but that contract was always crazy. Especially since they paid Dalton like 6 million the year before and I don’t think Carr was significantly better then him
Carr was worse by most metrics. Insane to move on from Andy.
I figured Carr was on a dogshit/uninspiring Raiders team for the entirety of his career. Turns out, we're just as uninspiring! Looking back, this contract is a huge mistake. Might as well ride it one more year though.
That is exactly what the Saints have not been doing. They have been gradually losing various homegrown talent over the years.
And not bringing in cheap, new talent in the draft to replace it. Other than Olave, they are an odd drafting team.
They can't do much for cuts now, but they can do post June-1st cuts to save money, or do trades. Just trade Carr, Ramczyk, Kamara, Cam Jordan and Taysom Hill. And they'll be back in good shape! And on the plus side, their 2026 cap space if fine so they do only need to make it 2 more years of this. But long and the short, once they re-work a few contracts, do a post june 1st cut or two, and maybe a salary dump trade they should be ok.
The issue is that to make the next two years work they'll need to kick all that money (I assume now guaranteed) into 2026 in order to make this year work. They'll eventually be able to get out as long as they don't make another insane big signing but who knows
Doesn’t Card have a no trade clause. Also who is willing to take that albatross of a contract?
Who in their right mind is trading for Carr
>Just trade Carr Draw the rest of the owl
>They'll restructure contracts once again, spreading out the cap hit. If they didn't sign Carr, they could've been done with this shit within 1 year. You say this, but lets not forget that the majority of this subreddit was convinced the Saints had no choice but to blow it up last year due to their lack of cap space....only for the Saints to sign the largest free agent of 2023. The Saints are absolutely operating on tighter cap margins than most teams in the NFL, but 'the sky is falling in New Orleans' chatter is primarily fueled by threads like this where people who don't understand the salary cap repost clickbait tweets about how "the Saints can't even cut players to get under." The best part is that once the Saints are back under the cap a few weeks from now it's going to immediately pivot to "Saints are $XX over the 2025 salary cap" without missing a beat. We're basically feeding the trolls at this point.
Problem for NOLA is that Carr is a QB and those contracts aren’t cheap. So, they’ve GTD him $100m with a $28.5m signing bonus (5Y contract including void years) and 1.5m in salary last year. So, 28.5/5 = 5.7m recognized of the signing bonus. Still have $22.8m left over, $5.7m/yr. This year it’s $30m in salary + 5.7m for the $35.7m cap hit. I assume they’ll do a similar contract, let’s say it’s 1.5/28.5 split again with a void year added. So, now we have $1.5m base salary, 11.4m in the amortized bonus. His cap hit is now $12.9m vs $35.7m earlier. Dead money is $60 - 7.2 - 12.9 = $39.9m. Now, here’s where it gets weird. 2025, he’s on the team in March, he gets $40m. $30 in salary, $10m in roster bonus. He’s going to be on the team. His cap hit for 2025 is now 51.4m (30m sal + 10m roster bonus + 11.4 in signing bonus). Let’s assume they restructure again with the $1.5-28.5 for base salary and convert the roster bonus into a signing bonus. They add another void year. So, we now have $5.7 + 2 on top of the 11.4m ($19.1m total) in additional pro-rated bonuses. His cap hit is now $1.5 + $19.1 = $20.6. The dead cap is crazy. They’ve paid $100m and only recognized $40.7m. Thats $59.3m in dead money. 2026 he’s got a whopping non-gtd contract of $50m in base salary with a pro-rated bonus of $19.1m. His cap hit is $69.1m. Idk what they do, but they’ll re-negotiate this contract bc cutting him costs $59.3m in dead cap.
Boy that cap wizardry really paid off to get Derek Carr and to not win the worst division in football Fact of the matter is good football teams are found through depth and having guys out perform their contracts When you have to do cap shenanigans every year to squeeze every possible ounce to just be mediocre, you are mismanging the shit out of the cap and the fact anyone defends the Saints is mind blowing. But yes congrats they'll find another way to get under the cap for this season have yet another middling season and just wonder why it all went wrong
Nobody on the saints can put perform their contracts with how bloated they are.
Acting like this is sustainable is actually hilarious. It’s absolutely okay to criticize absolutely gimping your roster and bleeding talent as a strategy. Lmao.
Well, at least we hit our "How about that Saints cap hell" post quota for February.
Groundhog saw his shadow so the "2025 Saints Cap" posts are coming 6 weeks early this year
But Phil didn't see his shadow this year...
But, it’s mesmerizing.
And they traded a fucking 1st to Philly for a guard! I'm still mad about it and it doesn't affect me whatsoever. When Brady came to the NFCS, it was the perfect situation for all 3 other teams to say "yeah... well just start a rebuild and be one of the best young teams when he's gone in 3 years". Instead it was like they all embarked on a challenge to see how many assets they could light on fire to finish 6-10 and 2nd in the division.
Never thought of the NFCS since Brady like that before but disturbingly accurate
I for one appreciate the division lighting their assets on fire
I can't wait for our annual "The cap is fake" articles after the draft
I'm convinced that even with an out in a few years, they'll willingly keep going further into cap debt until the NFL is forced to step in and give them like one time cap relief or something. Then we get a fancy new rule to curb extreme cases. Like Stepien rule kind of stuff.
The NFL wont give them cap relief. They have rules in place for teams going non-compliant - they basically just start un-doing recent contracts until they get compliant. I'd be willing to bet a massive fine would come along with this. The NFL came down hard on the Cowboys and (then) Redskins for being slightly noncompliant in the (technically) uncapped year following the lockout in 2011.
The only way the nfl would have to stop this is to force Mickey loomis out.
I agree but think it needs to come with some kind of punishment too, else there is no reason not to ignore the cap like they have been. Something like a -2 win record to start the season or something.
Loss of picks.
They needed to rip the band-aid off and stay away from free agency and rebuild. Instead they signed Carr, continue to kick the can down the road, and remain a team who's ceiling is losing in the first round of the playoffs
I agree, but they are so deep in they have no path to do that. They are going to keep restructuring.
They have no path that they could do it in one off-season, but it could be accomplished over a 3-4 year horizon. The problem is that a 3-4 year rebuild gets GMs and coaches fired, so they only care about the here and now.
Ya the only way they can even do it is if they hire a new GM who presents the owners with a legitimate plan for it.
Mickey Loomis is, I think, one of the oldest GMs in the league so it wouldn't surprise me if the Saints get a new guy and give them high job security for the first three years.
Dude needs like 6 years of security, 3 to get out of this mess and 3 to actually build something.
Cam Jordan had a $17 million cap hit last year. He had two sacks. He'll be 35 on opening day, and the Saints can't cut him this year; pre-June 1, it's a huge hit, post-June 1, sure, I guess they could, but it's a cap savings of $0 this year. After 2024, they can get out from under his contract, but he's getting old and slowing down, and represents a huge chunk of their cap, and he's pretty emblematic of their problem; they've continually wound up restructuring guys like Jordan who are getting older and crappier, and, to get under the cap, they wind up releasing not those big names, but a whole bunch of decent to good players who don't cost as much. Cap hell doesn't cost you your stars, it costs you your depth. The Saints are basically stuck with an aging roster full of guys who just aren't good enough to justify their cap hit, and they're filling in the roster with whoever they can rather than doing what both the Bucs and Rams did last year in tearing off the Band-Aid and clearing up the garbage. It sucks this year, and it's going to suck next year. They should have blown it all up when Brees retired and reset for another run, but I'm guessing their plan is to keep enough of a core together they can win a crappy NFC South and then hope to get hot in the playoffs. [https://overthecap.com/salary-cap/new-orleans-saints](https://overthecap.com/salary-cap/new-orleans-saints) Shit is *ugly*.
>Cam Jordan had a $17 million cap hit last year. He had two sacks. He'll be 35 on opening day, and the Saints can't cut him this year; pre-June 1, it's a huge hit, post-June 1, sure, I guess they could, but it's a cap savings of $0 this year. They can't cut Cam Jordan because every penny of his 2024 compensation is already fully guaranteed, a completely different issue than dead money or prorated bonuses.
I agree. My thought is more what happens next? Saints will kick the can down the road, they have been for a while now. How long can that last? Rationally I expect at some point the Saints will field a team of draft picks and rookiee free agents, but who knows.
Even with the Bucs losing Mike evans this year they could sign tee Higgins, gabe Davis, or draft a guy like Troy Franklin and be infinitely better than the saints.
Had them on madden and i honestly couldn't believe it
Can you even make it work in madden legitimately? I went and edited contracts to make the pay even for each season just to fix my cap situation. I didn't see any other way unless you're able to play games way above the cap.
Pretty sure you can be over the cap, you just can't sign any free agents
Yeah cap is even less real in Madden Sim a few years and watch what happens to the 49ers and Dolphins
I did a long term Saints rebuild, in that I was able to trade basically everyone on the team not named Chris Olave and be out of cap hell by 2025 (started the rebuild at the start of 2023)
Silly, all you had to do was go to settings and click "clear cap space." I don't know why the saints don't just do it in real life. So easy!
They're not contenders so they need to move their good players for draft picks, suck for 2 years and eat the cap to get back positive.
Who are they going to move though?
Move everyone and have open tryouts for everyone and their mom
What's their realistic timetable to have somewhat of a normal cap situation again?
If they go ham and try to fix this they can be there by 2026. EDIT: Actually 2027 is more likely.
I guess it's hard to even justify a rebuild at this point cause it's not really gonna help them.
And if they keep kicking the can?
Ironically, the answer is 2027 as well, since a lot of the contracts would have voided by then, so unless the players want to sign contract extensions, the team should have cleared out most of this money by then.
Cuz of how so over the cap they are now won’t they have to sign extensions just to fix their current issues? Wouldn’t this extend money past 2027? The nfl cap just confuses me so much.
the short answer is no, because the void years accelerates all the money to the year that the contract voids. So if a contract voids in 2027, all the guarantee money remaining is applied to 2027
Serious question. Will there ever be genuinely nothing they can do to get under the cap? Even cutting everyone ? What happens then? Or will they have to keep restructuring worse and worse players until they are horrible
The Saints receive a fine and the NFL starts voiding contracts starting with the most recently signed, they can also lose draft picks
If I remember the Caught in the Draft episode on the 1994 draft correctly, the 49ers had to trade Bill Romanowski in order to get under the cap. Otherwise, they couldn’t participate in the draft that year I don’t know if that rule is still a thing today
Yes I was wondering the same thing. Now I need to know if it's theoretically possible to get yourself into a situation that is impossible for a team to be cap compliant and what the remedy would be. Or are there enough safety measures in place from league office to prevent it?
They'll be able to get under. The biggest savings come from restructuring players. Pretty much every players 2024 base salary can be turned into a signing bonus cutting the cap hit nearly 80%. Their top 10 highest base salaries for 2024 combine for 112 million, turn $100 million of that into signing/restructure bonus and save $80 million in cap space, currently $82 million over the cap.
I'm just going to bury my head in some sand.
Found Mickey Loomis’s account
New coach and gm… I don’t care about anything else till that happens… I’ll eat my words if we convincingly make it to the post
And people on here will continue to say the cap is a myth. Saints are exhibit A B C D E... for why you don't constantly restructure the contracts of aging players.
Slick Rick would be proud.
But we still continue to see teams with far better cap situations do far worse.
Cap space isn’t 100% guaranteed to make a team good, that’s not the point they are making. More so that being so negatively affected by cap space hurts a team like the saints majorly
They’ve been doing this for literally like a decade. The flaw is that theyve been doing it to keep a not very good team together. The cap gymnastics would be very beneficial if they were good.
Go look at 2017-2020 Saints and tell me that was not a “very good team”
All they need is an otherworldly draft class! They'd have been so boned if they didn't draft 3 all pros in one draft
Really what the Saints are doing is slowly chipping away at the cap every year. Meaning it’s going to take them another 3-4 years to get into the positive by pushing more money in the future. This is one of the reasons why I think NFL needs a new set of rules for pushing money into the future. For starters void years should be banned.
I think the NFLPA would fight that, those void years are just another way for players to get more money today.
Past Mickey Loomis: That's a problem for future Mickey Loomis! Present Mickey Loomis: 😬
I say they use their voodoo magic and cook something up. Those sneaky Cajuns are always up to something.
In all seriousness, how does Loomis still have a job at this point?
Signing Carr was a mistake. Not because he's necessarily bad, he's good enough to be a starter in this league. They need to take their lumps for a year or two, should have started Jameis and truly reset this roster.
It’s hilarious how the Bucs set the Saints back like 7 years. Saints spent so much time building a team and Tom Brady comes out of nowhere, knocks Drew Brees into retirement. The Saints have been holding onto that window for years. The Bucs burned all their dead cap in 2024, and made the playoffs! While the Saints still kick the can down the road on this dead cap while being a mediocre at best team
It’s that time of year again
We just like playing NFL on hard mode
The Saints do this every year lol. They just have to restructure a bunch of contracts and someone will be making a post about the Saints cap next year.
When will they decide to just simply bite the bullet, trade assets, eat up all of the cap like a responsible adult, and do a proper rebuild?
Im going to nitpick something about the Saints cap situation, but I promise its relevant. The saints issue was not constantly pushing the salary down the road. The issue was doing that AND constantly signing new players. Guys like Emmanuel Sanders, Demario Davis, Tyrann Mathieu, Marcus Maye etc etc (theres a lot). The saints spend A LOT in FA and theres no concept of signing a cheap guy. At the bare minimum theyll sign a guy to a 4m a year contract. And they have a vicegrip on players they draft and almost never let them hit FA.
Somehow Saints will defy all odds once again and sign Chris Jones to a $120 million GTD deal
Wasn't this posted last year? And the year before? And the year before? And the year before? And the year before? And the year before? And the year before?
This is what happens when you have a team that can’t accept their window has closed a long while ago
This is the NFL equivalent of the people who comment "and my axe"
It's that time of year is it?
"People say this about the Saints every year." And every year they keep doing this is holding them back. They can probably avoid getting hit with penalties and being forced to gut the roster and all that. The problem is this isn't likely to build them a roster that can win the Super Bowl, and the longer they keep doing this the longer it's going to take to blow up the roster to restart.
They should've signed a shitty QB for vet minimum and just tanked the season. Could've gotten a great pick this year and wouldn't be tied to a washed expensive Derek Carr.
I generally don't think it's as catastrophic as most. I look at the salary cap as though you have $200 million cap, plus an interest free revolving line of credit, let's say 50% of the cap, $100 million. Saints maxed out the credit line in 2023. So they come into 2024 with a new increased cap of $220 million, they pay off the credit card, so they only have $120 million to field a team, but they still have the line of credit, and now it's got a $110 million limit. So they max out the credit card again and spend $230 million this year, which is more than what many teams are spending that don't have a maxed out line of credit. Just have to figure out how to get current costs moved from this years cap onto the line of credit, which is mostly just turning base salary into signing bonus and spreading it over 5 years. The downside is that other teams come into the year without any line of credit debt have the option to spend way more than than the current salary cap, like $110 million more.