It's not necessarily blowing up the team, just lack of flexibility in general. The fact that no other team has copied this strategy in a copycat league should be enough to know it doesn't work, and it doesn't enable us to spend as much or more as the next team as we get deeper into the strategy (22nd in cash spending this year despite having the 3rd lowest cap space when factoring in unused restructures). Not saying the cap is the number one reason for our struggles, but it's clearly not optimal.
Non-guaranteed years are the NFL version of an NBA team option, but we convert them to fully guaranteed years all the time. It's why Carr's contract would be a $60-70m contract anywhere else, but it's a $100m contract in New Orleans. I don't think the team would sign him to a two-year $90m deal with $40m in guarantees in 2025 if he was a free agent after this year, but that's the deal he will have (with plenty of dead money from 2023 and 2024 included).