NOF: Saints in position to get under the cap with ease and create another $30+ million in cap space to add new players

St. Widge said
Yes and those minimum cash spending requirements allows owners to still make a huge profit.

And I didn't say all teams do that and some of the teams that spend a bunch of money, do it the same way we do, but not necessarily to the same extent we do. Philly for example.

The point is that there are many ways to manage the cap and it's not clear that any one way is better than the other. They all have issues some don't allow you to keep your own good but expensive players, some give you less flexibility if you sign a bad contract, some make you sacrifice older leadership and talent in exchange for flexibility, others force you to tear your team apart once you have a really good year, etc.

But, in the end, none of them work well if you are bad at talent evaluation and coaching where as most of them work really well if you are good at talent evaluation and coaching. In the end, it's likely that the best way to manage the cap depends on the situation and circumstances you are in.

The Eagles definitely spent more than us over the last three years. This chart is for three year cash spending from before the 2023 league year, the Eagles were just $6m behind us and that was before they spent $55m on Hurts, Johnson, and Slay. Saints are 17th on the below chart, the idea that we are outspending the league is false. We are just limiting our future options by paying bonuses instead of salaries. Only four teams were considerably behind us (more than 10% less cash spent).