The biggest double-digit contract numbers before the NFL-free agency were not hard to find Sunday, with the New Orleans Saints signing quarterback Taysom Hill for a brilliant – but completely insignificant – four-year contract extension, $ 140 million. The keywords in that sentence: Completely void.
In most cases of NFL contracts, the phrase is translated in numbers as ‘completely meaningless’. What the expansion implies is that it is not one of the cases.
There are several important signals of the Hill expansion.
What’s really about Taysom Hill’s $ 140 million expansion?
First the numbers: the whole $ 140 million expansion is not a real number. It’s a mechanism used to expand Hill’s current salary cap hit and reduce how much he counts this year. If you’ve been paying attention in the NFL this past week, you’re familiar with teams that cut new deals with players and use invalid years to basically move their money further into the future when more space becomes available, a maneuver that has become needed this year when the 2021 salary cap dropped to $ 182.5 million due to the shortage of pandemic-related income. All you need to know about Hill’s deal is that the extension years at the end of the 2021 season are void, meaning he officially has a one-year contract.
The math: Hill had a capital cost of $ 16.159 million that has now been reduced to $ 8.41 million, saving the Saints $ 7.749 million on the hood this season. The savings mean that a capital cost of $ 7.749 million that will not count this year will be pushed to 2022, unless Hill signs a new expansion.
All of this is important for two reasons. First, Hill still counts a lot against the hood, even if it is spread over two years, which should be an indication that the Saints still consider him their potential starting quarterback from 2021 onwards. And secondly, the fact that he will be counting on next season’s cap, whether he’s in the squad or not, should indicate some motivation for the Saints to sign an extension in the course of the 2021 season. to start work when he starts at quarterback and plays well.
Is Jameis Winston Another Factor in New Orleans?
Hill not only appears to be taking over next season for retired Drew Brees, but his money and contract structure is already an indication that he is the favorite for the post, especially since the team has yet to sign Jameis. Winston. That doesn’t mean Winston will not be part of a quarterback run for the Saints in 2021. It just makes it clear that New Orleans wants Hill to be part of the derby and that his remaining cap penalty is already him at a “Start” level.
Considering the image of Winston, a source close to the quarterback told Yahoo Sports last night that he wants to stay in New Orleans and sees Saints and head coach Sean Payton as his ideal situation to earn a starting position, not to not to mention. a long-term agreement. Whether that happens will ultimately mean another team Winston unexpectedly offers a starting position in 2021, which is highly unlikely. The most likely scenario is that Winston enters into an agreement to pay him a low base salary with big incentives to increase his earnings if he wins the starting position with a fruitful season. The prisoner is that Winston can also offer the same kind of deals elsewhere, though he would not have the one year of fame he already had in New Orleans.
Do not expect Russell Wilson or Deshaun Watson to become candidates
Cooked, it looks like New Orleans is on its way to the point where we all suspected in the case of a Brees retirement: with a quarterback competition between Hill and Winston, but with Hill as the initial forerunner from the 2021 salary implications . In an ideal situation, the Saints would see one of the players as worthy of a long-term extension, which would come into effect late in the 2021 season, with the Saints able to use the franchise label to sign Hill of Winston as such an expansion cannot be achieved.
Lost in all of this is the evaporation of the “fantasy” scenario that is never going to happen, which would see the Saints trade for Russell Russell or Seattle Deshawun Watson of Seattle Seahawks. Not only would the saints have to substantially increase their roster or hammer the future cap years dramatically to make such a signing happen, but the franchise would also have to release significant assets that would include some core pieces of the current roster.
Hill’s hood-related expansion kills every chance of the event, which is another significant signal sent by a ghost expansion that made a lot of noise but actually just whispered the same quarterback scenario we’d been expecting all along.
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