Trey H
You do remember the insane salary cap gymnastics we had to pull just to get cap compliant that year after the COVID season which resulted in the salary cap dropping far lower than they expected, right?
We released/traded 5 starters, lost 2 more to retirement (Brees and Robinson), and then lost 3 more starters once free agency opened in addition to losing Hendrickson.
If we actually had the cap space don’t you think we would’ve been able to retain at least the ones we lost in free agency? Our “biggest” free agency signings that year from outside the organization were Nick Vannett and Tanoh Kpassagnon making $2.6M/year and $2.25M/year. But yeah, we totally had money to pay Hendrickson $15M/year.
On top of all that, we also had to franchise tag Marcus Williams and extend 2 massive contracts (Ramczyk and Lattimore) at top money for their positions as they would hit free agency the next season if not and also franchise tag Marcus Williams, who we couldn’t afford to retain the following year either. It is what it is.
This was the most extreme of extreme cap anomalies imaginable for this scenario of losing Trey to occur though.
The cap went down significantly due to covid, the only time in history it has gone down instead of up, putting strain on our cap.
We also lost Drew Brees to retirement, which accelerated his cap hits.
And this was also the year that virtually all of our renown 2017 draft class’ contracts were up, so decisions had to be made.
No team can keep everyone. Even teams with “healthy caps” lose free agents.
At the time we had Jordan, and Davenport, who at the time appeared to be ready to step up. It made sense why we wouldn’t want to have signed a to that point, injury prone, one year wonder in Trey to a big money deal.
In all, no way can you fault the team for not having an unprecedented global pandemic factored into their long term cap economics. You’re talking about a swing of at least $25 million lost there.
The most bizarre set of circumstances led to us losing Trey. Just an absolute perfect storm of setbacks.
The losses from the 2017 draft class are always the ones cited as the “Why the Saints cap system doesn’t work” example, but it truly necessitated some crazy, unprecedented events to occur, including the greatness of that one class in itself, for this virtual one-time anomaly to happen.