The NFL season is over, but one of its fiercest contests is another round. For the past ten years, the New Orleans Saints have made an opponent of the salary cap and the idea that they should work with balanced books or any financial constraints in mind. They often eliminated the winner by spending game on credit, pushing the cost commitments into future years and – in a magical way it may seem – keeping together the core of a solid list for the long term. Seeing the saints doing business over the past few years felt like we were watching the middle scenes of Uncut jeweleryHoward Ratner, played by Adam Sandler, doubles down on a risky scheme with the money he gets from selling his black opal to Kevin Garnett rather than paying off his debt. It’s worth noting that (spoiler alert!) Hits the parlay. It’s also worth noting that Sandler reaches a grim end before he can enjoy his profits.
The effects of COVID-19 restrictions have reduced league revenue and increased the difficulty required for the Saints and other teams playing a similar game of salary chicken. Financial losses mean the end of continued growth in salary ceilings – at least in the immediate term – which teams have reasonably taken for granted. The Over the Cap website bases its 2021 figures on a cap figure of $ 180.5 million, almost $ 18 million less than the 2020 salary cap of $ 198.2 million and an even stronger decline due to the fact that the cap has grown by at least $ 10 million over seven consecutive years. New Orleans would hardly be in the black if the limit were higher – the Saints are currently $ 69.5 million above the salary limit, according to OTC. Even in a league where it is standard to move money around and spend aggressively, OTC founder Jason Fitzgerald told me that the Saints are getting the most extreme crisis he has ever seen.
‘There is no real thought for tomorrow with them. “Everything is alive for today and will be determined tomorrow, tomorrow,” said Fitzgerald. ‘The Saints are just doing what you have to do to get under the cap this year, and we will worry about it next year and the year after and the year after. To the extent that they currently have the problem, it’s partly because of the lower hood of the hood, but this year they are still going to be in trouble. It is not as if they will be in a good position in any shape or form. ”
The general manager of Saints, Mickey Loomis, got his first job at the organization in 2000 and became general manager in 2002. Under Loomis, the management of the salary cap was aggressive – often by pushing money into future years – the norm in New Orleans. Take quarterback Drew Brees, for example: last season, the Saints and Brees agreed a two-year contract. However, in 2022 and 2023, the agreement had two void years to spread the salary limitation of the signing bonus of the agreement. This is a method that creative accounting teams sometimes use to balance their books in the short term while costing themselves. New Orleans was also not full of space last season, so Brees’ contract structure allowed them to make a deal without getting a big salary cut. The compromise, which the Saints presumably knew they were doing, was the likelihood that they would still pay the cap costs if Brees was no longer with the team.
To get under the roof this year, the Saints need to release or trade good players. For the lucky teams that have money to spend, the losses of New Orleans could be their gains; they will, like the vultures, surround the saints to find firm veterans on cheap contracts or to trade with advantage. New Orleans is likely to push back money owed on existing transactions in the coming years, though it will be harmed in any restructuring negotiations. It will also mostly put out free agencies and offer the back of its list with draft picks and unknown free agents at cheaper deals. In the NFL, it has become a conventional wisdom to say that the salary cap can be bent according to any team’s will, but the Saints are against the limit of practice. And yet it is also not clear that they did anything else or want to do in the future. The Saints are a mess and they may not have really gotten confused.
According to Fitzgerald, the first thing New Orleans is likely to do to clear the cap space is linebacker Kwon Alexander, who was largely inefficient in New Orleans after being acquired at a 49-year-old trade last season. Alexander tears his Achilles in Week 16; if the Saints cut him, they would create $ 13 million in cap space. The defensive tackle Malcom Brown is another likely victim; to cut him could save $ 5 million. The cutting edge Janoris Jenkins would save another $ 7 million. It is noteworthy that these are good players the Saints are likely to retain. Sometimes there are teams that get in trouble because they have bad contracts to download. The Eagles, another type of cap-band team, recently released wide receivers DeSean Jackson and Alshon Jeffery, who were not part of their plans for health and performance-related issues next season; New Orleans may have to part with reasonable salaries with good players, simply because they do not have the money to pay it. In a perfect world, for example, the Saints want to try to re-sign the homemade defensive trey Hendrickson, who had 13.5 sacks last season. They certainly will not be able to do that.
“I do not know if it could really be worse,” Fitzgerald said.
Defensive end Cameron Jordan currently has the highest cap shot in the team at $ 18.9 million; about $ 10 million of that could be pushed back to future years. About $ 9 million more of recipient Michael Thomas’ $ 12.6 million base salary could also be pushed into the future, assuming New Orleans feels comfortable with the commitment given their history of drama with Thomas. Thomas was the subject of trade rumors – another possible way for the team to limit space – but to sell him, $ 20 million in dead money would be put on the Saints’ books. Guard Andrus Peat and Terron Armstead’s offensive approach are both candidates for restructuring, although the commitment to either increase his own risk is important to Peat’s injury history, and Armstead’s contract has caught on for several empty years to spread the blow.
As Fitzgerald sees it, it will be difficult for New Orleans to keep both cornerback Marshon Lattimore and attacking Ryan Ramczyk on their fifth-year options in 2021. Both players were part of a stellar 2017 draft class, which also included setbacks Alvin Kamara. , which has enabled New Orleans to supplement the roster with cheap talent and cover some of the existing problems. However, Lattimore and Ramczyk are no longer so cheap, as both players are earning more than $ 10 million this season. A team like the Jets or Jaguars, which equals cap space, should be able to approach the Saints with a favorable trade offer, as New Orleans will be encouraged to give one of the players for the savings on the cap.
All in all, the cuts, restructuring and possible operations are getting the Saints in the ball of the 2021 cap. There is, of course, the elephant in the room: Brees has not yet announced whether he will retire in 2021 or come play again. Brees had already restructured his contract to make it easy for the Saints should he choose to retire; Assuming he waits until June 2 to make his retirement official, New Orleans will carry $ 11.15 million in dead money on his book for Brees in 2021 and $ 11.5 million for 2022. If Brees returns, Fitzgerald takes to that the saints would add empty years to his contract. spread the cap stroke so that it is not higher than the figure. Should Brees retire before June 2, the amount for 2021 would be $ 22.7 million, but that would be highly unlikely. The whole picture is a continuous grid and a fire sale with other teams salivating to take advantage. Well, well, well, if it’s not the result of my own actions.
Given all this, one would think that New Orleans would look in the mirror for a long time. However, Fitzgerald does not think that will be the case.
“They’re just going to keep doing what they do,” Fitzgerald said. “I don’t think anyone really learns anything from these things.”
Teams like the Saints, Steelers, Vikings and Eagles who, as my colleague Kevin Clark puts it, regularly dipped on the salary cap made it fashionable to claim that the salary cap does not matter. Fitzgerald’s addendum to the statement would be that the cap does not matter in any given year, notwithstanding the financial constraints imposed by COVID-19. Teams have learned that it is better to spend later and worry about the future later, especially when it is so easy to push the bills further into the future. But the situation of the Saints shows that it hurts when the bill comes. They are not alone either. The Bills have spent aggressively in free enterprise over the past two seasons, but the year before they bore more than $ 50 million in dead capital costs. (It was a useful setback, though it’s the 2018 bill price of acquiring a solid bridge quarter, which in turn forced Josh Allen to start earlier than Buffalo had hoped.) The Dolphins are currently one of the teams rising the fastest in the NFL. ; a year ago they paid 15 players more than $ 1 million not to be on their list. The NFL’s version of the tank is not for pull options, but for hood space.
“It catches up with you at some point. There was really no team that could succeed in that, ”said Fitzgerald. ‘Maybe you can be happy with some of these things like the Saints with it [2017] concept class that hid kind of problems; Dallas with Dak Prescott for Tony Romo. It hid many of the problems they had, their cap was a mess and it hid it. Almost all of these teams go through it. ”
Fitzgerald believes it is unlikely that this off-season will make the Saints into careful financial planners for two reasons: old habits are dying hard and it is simply not self-evident that the pain is not worth it. Shorter futures, smaller signing bonuses and cheaper rookie contracts have made it so that even if teams have individual, terrible cap years, the perpetual salary cap is a rare reality in the NFL today.
“In the past, you’d be stuck with guys a lot longer because of the reasons for a cap,” Fitzgerald said. ‘I think teams are a little better at it, where you only take one bad year and then it’s still empty. You start again. You’ll probably get in trouble in four years, but it’s long. ‘
While we were talking, I half-jokingly asked Fitzgerald if the cycle of restructuring and cap maneuvers would continue just forever.
“That’s about what they do!” he said.
The saints are in a bad place in their own creation and if they get the chance, they might do it again from before. This year’s lower capitalization has shed light on what was already a visible reality: Sporadic salary cap is now the cost of doing business.