salary cap hell!

SonOfNOLA said
Besides QB, the Saints haven’t desired a prime free agent in at least a decade while they’ve already invested a 1st-2nd round pick at the position in the most recent drafts.

Saints can absolutely sign any FA who they want to clear cap space for. They’ve shown that they can by signing Mathieu and Carr to big $ at important positions while beginning the offseasons in deep negative cap.

There’s a difference in not wanting the Saints to restructure players because of high negative cap space to begin offseasons. Versus making it seem like the Saints can’t make moves due to restructures simply because we don’t like the restructures pushing salary into the future.

They can clear space at any time for anyone they want if they haven’t invested day 1-2 picks into the positions.

I don’t think you get what we are saying, yes the Saints signed Carr to big money contract. And now it looks like they will restructure his contract. Let’s say that Carr bombs, stinks it up or the Saints just decide he is not their future, do you think we would be able to release or trade him after next season? The answer is no, if he is restructured. The cap money kicked down the road would be too large to deal with in one fiscal year. Can we trade him? Again no, for the same reason. The money you pay a player today in the form of a signing bonus and spread throughout the contract, will be due at some point. It just a bad way to run a franchise long term. You’re handcuffing your franchise and you have to be right on all those players being what you expect (Mike Thomas). I would guess the Saints are 4 or 5 years away from being a legit contender with our “cap hell” if they draft well. So you’re looking at the 2028 or 2029 season. And every year they play the restructure game it delays us another year. You’re just delaying the inevitable.

We need to get out of these bad contracts/restructures. Purge the older players. We won’t be contenders during this process anyway. Save draft capital and draft well.