Dead caps the past 10 years - here's the manifesto

SonOfNOLA said
The missing context is that the dead money stems from pushing back cap hits of a HOF QB and a large number of Pro Bowl/All-Pro players (originally drafted by the Saints) to maintain a competitive team. Dead money totals appears to be high when restructuring a multitude of productive veterans on the team, in different age and guaranteed money ranges.

Dead money and the initial over the cap total isn’t stopping the Saints and NFL teams from adding talent.

Bad coaching, inconsistent QB play/lack of QB draft priority post-Brees, and a few missed 1st round DE picks looks to be the primary sources of the Saints’ losing seasons.

Saints have used most of their salary cap on extending productive-star draft picks. Outside of Drew and Demario, the team’s core talent during playoff runs and winning seasons were never originally-acquired with salary cap space. Available or unavailable cap space isn’t solving the Saints’ worst problems at HC, QB and core talent.

The bolded part is routinely ignored around here when it comes to the mob attacking Loomis. IMO, any complaints about his CAP management skills should fall on deaf ears because there were very few complaints when those largest contracts were handed out.

In particular, Brees played out the entirety of his 2012 5yr contract and thwarted attempts of negotiating long term extension in 2016. His contract had a ballooning final 2 years on the CAP and a multi-year extension could have mitigated our current situation. Instead of working out a long term deal, Brees opted to do a 1yr deal which accounted for well over 10% of the cap and essentially repeated doing so until his retirement 5 years later.

Loomis had no other alternative but to continue with his "kick the can" approach if he wanted to continue to fill a competitive roster.

I'll hold him accountable for not firing DA after yr 2 and for giving in to the idea that we should chase a FA QB. He had a chance to pay the bill for the Payton/Brees era and he opted to double down on his error of hiring DA cause Payton endorsed the hire.