Saints restructure Ramczyk to vet minimum per Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap
What really exasperated the cap hell created by Loomis' strategy was covid and its effect on the salary cap. That created a huge mess he has chasing since then.
And it was compounded when he decided to give Carr the contract he gave him. A lot of the restructuring and bad contracts recently are a result of the COVID year and the Carr contract.
I was okay with the way they did the cap during the Brees years, but it's a bad strategy now. As Rouxble pointed out, it's gotten more extreme from 2021 to 2024, but I think that is related to what you identified, the COVID year, in addition to the Carr contract.
I do think Loomis is at least moving in the direction of getting things more normal but it's going to take time and I don't totally trust that he won't go YOLO at some point. But, whatever he does, he needs to stop adding all the void years to contracts which hurt our ability to reshape the roster. He also needs to find a way to get better at drafting and he needs to stop trading up. He's been fairly conservative on the trade ups since the Penning/Olave draft, but he even traded up for Kool-Aid. Although the rumor is that he had a deal to move down with LA last year had Bowers been on the board. It was a situation where he should not have done it, but at least we know he is at least somewhat open to the idea now.
I'd rather move on to a new GM, but I think we all know that isn't happening right now. But, if he does miss on this HC hire and fails to rebuild the team, I do think he will be gone within the next 3 years. Gayle is patient enough to give him one bad HC hire and the moves he made for that HC, but I can't see her being patient beyond that. Especially after the stepped in to fire DA mid-season.