Jump to content

The Saints salary cap issues


AussieTitanFan08

Recommended Posts

Truly is mind boggling how the Saints have got themselves into such a salary cap mess, currently their top 11 paid players are scheduled to count over $180 million against the 2021 cap.

 

This is taken from Albert Breer's MAQB Column

 

• As we’ve gone over, the Saints have been all-in the last couple years. The bills on that coming due, combined with the expected retirement of Drew Brees and league-wide salary cap situation figure to put the franchise at a very real crossroads. Ten players (Michael Thomas, Cam Jordan, Terron Armstead, Andrus Peat, Taysom Hill, David Onyemata, DeMario Davis, Jared Cook, Emmanuel Sanders, Janoris Jenkins, Marshon Lattimore and Ryan Ramczyk) have eight-figure cap numbers for 2021. Add those 10 up and you’re at right around $159.2 million. Brees, if he retires, leaves $22.65 million in dead money. So for 11 guys, one of whom wouldn’t be on the team in that scenario, they’re already up over $180 million with the cap unlikely to top $200 million, and maybe be closer to $175 million, with 43 roster spots to fill.

 

I’m not smart enough to figure out how they’ll make it work, and GM Mickey Loomis has been a master in the past at wiggling out of these situations. But with all this, plus guys like Lattimore and Ramczyk potentially wanting extensions in the neighborhood of $20 million per year, and guys we didn’t even mention (Malcolm Jenkins, Alvin Kamara) carrying significant numbers, it sure looks like there will be a lot of tough calls to make. The good news is that, since assistant GM Jeff Ireland arrived a few years back, New Orleans has drafted better than anyone in football—and the draft is where you find the cheap young talent to alleviate these problems.

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Unless I'm mistaken, trading players won't be possible until the new season officially starts, at which point the Saints need to be under the cap. It's releasing or restructuring.

 

This is why I asked what the penalty is for not being under the cap by season start in another thread - maybe it's worth it for the Saints to test this and then be able to line up trades to help them out, if the NFL would even allow that? because otherwise they get nothing for players they need to release (do released players even count towards future comp picks? I didn't think so).

 

Thomas is a commonly referenced trade target. Based on OverTheCap, he won't produce a cap saving unless traded after June 1st, and a team can't designate a player traded before June 1 as a post-June 1 trade (unlike releasing, which allows you to do that for I believe at least 2 players). So it seems unlikely any time soon.

 

There's going to be a lot of technicalities the Saints will need to explore. For instance, Brees retiring will save some cap, but significantly more if he can be designated a post-June 1st cut. I'm not sure if this mechanism can be used for a retiring player - if it can't, perhaps it makes technical sense to actually cut Brees before he "retires" and designate him a post-June 1st cut. There may be other players more suitable to release and assign as post-June 1st cuts, but the difference for Brees is $13.5M savings vs $25M savings. So if they can somehow make him a post-June 1st cut designation, that's an extra $11.5M in cap savings - no one else comes close to $25M as a post-June 1st cut (next highest is Cam Jordan at $13.9M).

 

Ryan Ramczyk and Kwon Alexander are together counting about $24M against the 2021 cap - both are obvious restructure targets (Ramczyk is on a 5th year option and they traded for Alexander mid season whose base salary can be converted to prorated bonus with a new deal). I'm not sure how OTC calculate the savings from a restructure exactly - it seems it would heavily depend on the exact details of the new deal - but I'm scanning the Saints team with the restructure savings drop down set, and I'm not seeing a lot of huge savings there - a few million here and there.

 

Based on this, it seems like they will need to do a LOT of cutting. 2021 - the start of the new Aints era?

 

OTC do writeups from time to time, I would expect one soon on how the Saints can recover the situation.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Scratch that post-June 1st designation stuff - apparently doing that means the team has to carry their current cap number until June 2nd, it just means when they do eventually get off your cap books, they do so with more savings now vs later. So it is a mechanism for teams with some cap room to work with, basically. Given this doesn't describe the Saints at all, they probably can't even use the designation at all.

 

EDIT: unless they do something like what is described here: https://overthecap.com/eagles-get-creative-with-the-salary-cap/

 

Basically, restructure contracts for players they want to cut after June 1st so their current cap hit is minimized while they wait for June 2nd to arrive, and then they get cut. I wonder why a player would agree to the restructure though - even if the restructure includes a way to guarantee the release will happen by June 2nd, that still means you miss out on the early FA market, which is more lucrative for a player. Whether the Saints could even do this is questionable given the amount they need to clear before the season starts.

 

I don't think a team has quite been in this situation before, especially when you consider the impacts of COVID-19. It makes you wonder if the NFL won't come to the rescue to some extent.

Link to post
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Nash said:

Hardly dumpster diving for the top 11, but if anyone has ideas about other less expensive players that might be available , please post them here

 

Not sure if these qualify but the lesser names who bring some bang for cap space buck to release for the Saints seem to be Malcolm Brown, Janoris Jenkins and Emmanuel Sanders. Each move saves in the range of $5M or so and none would likely command big new deals.

Link to post
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, OzTitan said:

 

Not sure if these qualify but the lesser names who bring some bang for cap space buck to release for the Saints seem to be Malcolm Brown, Janoris Jenkins and Emmanuel Sanders. Each move saves in the range of $5M or so and none would likely command big new deals.

If we let Davis walk Sanders would be a good replacement. His route running isn’t the best, but he has really good hands and still capable deep speed. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, IsntLifeFunny said:

If we let Davis walk Sanders would be a good replacement. His route running isn’t the best, but he has really good hands and still capable deep speed. 

No thanks, Sanders will be 34 in March.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...