Best explanation of how teams get around salary cap limits

LiterOCola said
Which makes sense. If the salary cap is expected to rise, tomorrow's dollars are cheaper than today's dollars. Pushing contracts into the future let's a team get more for their dollars now.

Where the Saints got stung is COVID causing the cap to stagnate. I believe Loomis had all the contracts planned out into the future expecting a certain cap expansion. When it didn't expand anywhere near the expectation, a lot of the Saints calculated moves became very troublesome.

I think you are right but it’s also a given when you have an elite QB for any stretch, you are going to have to pay up eventually. If Drew’s dead money is 11mil, that is probably about as good as it gets for a QB of that caliber. The same contract structures that make all of the above true, make it very unlikely that anybody will just play the years on their contract and walk away.