Saints restructure Ramczyk to vet minimum per Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap

MikeyF said
but not one single person thought Ramz career would end in its prime in 2024...
It started out as just a simple "clean up" procedure.

The point is more about the cap dollars, and most teams don't kick the can down the road to the extent that we do because no one can be sure when a player will lose ability due to age/injury/etc. If we hadn't kicked the can down the road, he would be off the books already with the same amount of money paid to him.

I'll again say that I think the contract was just about perfect in hindsight in terms of length and dollars, because his last guarantees ran out last year.

St. Geezy said
So we paid for a player we all wanted to keep while not having current money by using future money, the same option is available today.

It’s annoying to look at on the books, but more emphasis needs to be placed on the 5 year cap outlook and what’s always there and available to pull from on a constant rolling and replenishment basis, and as a bonus, you’re allowed to be over the limit in future years.

Looking at it as single years will drive you insane.

I get that we have rolling dollars and a five year outlook, as do all teams, but we limit our ability to move on when it's time because the dead money forces our hand to an extent. Carr's contract is the perfect example--without a restructure, we could cut him today and only be on the hook for a $27.1m cap hit, instead it is a $50.1m cap hit due to restructuring. We go from being able to save $30m with an immediate cut to only saving $1.4m because of the dead money his restructure created.

That limits our ability to simply say, let's move on and give Rattler the reins, because we need to restructure multiple contracts to create space that otherwise wouldn't be needed.