2025 salary cap expected to be 5-10 million higher than previous estimates (merged)
This is going to sound negative to some of you but it is not my intention. It’s simply how I feel about the state of our team, how the leagues best teams manage their teams and the direction we should be going.
Ok, so how many players are under contract for each team, because that is what Loomis was referring to.
Saints 62
Texans 58
Chiefs 50
Bucs 61
Ravens 53
Eagles 59
The Chiefs are definitely the worse off as they only have 50 under contract. But their problem comes with how much success they’ve had. They’ve won their divisions 9 years in a row and have been to the Super Bowl 5 out of the last 6 years. Their players are more in demand and command bigger contracts to retain. Their best players are under contract and they’ll fill the bottom through the draft. If they lose one or two, they’re largely fine because they have a core they can afford for now and most importantly they win. They may end up in trouble soon for the same reasons we started to in 2019. But it will be worth the rebuild because of their success. No doubt their fans will think it was worth it.
And of all of those free agents you listed, how many will those teams prioritize resigning? Each of those teams will prioritize a couple of their best players that are in their primes and let the rest test leave in free agency. They’ll draft some replacements and fill the bottom of the roster with cheaper players. The rest will go on to get contracts from other teams like the Jaguars, the Raiders and Titans that have cap space and are trying to improve.
Now look at the Saints roster. They have free agents that they might not even care to have back and other teams might not want either. How many do they have under contract that we would release to get younger if we could in order to sign the scraps of the winning teams? A bunch, but they can’t because the team’s books are screwed up. You can’t convince me that they actively want to keep Cam, Demario, Tyrann, and Taysom until their wheels fall off. And I don’t believe that they don’t regret that Carr contract and wouldn’t kick the can if they didn’t have to. Yet that’s what we’re doing and they are all close to falling off a cliff.
The point is that the good teams are letting their older players cycle out and keep their best young players on the team. We can’t even be talked about in the same breath as those teams because we are lacking in young talent and are stuck with our old players contracts. The real apples to oranges is that those other teams are ALL under the cap, winning with sustained success over years and have roster flexibility in the right places and we have none of those things.
Oh what the heck, I have a few minutes to spare before my kids get home.
Eagles - $19m in cap space and here are their free agents:
Ravens - $13m in cap space, and here are their free agents:
Bucs - $8m in cap space, free agents:
Chiefs - $8m in cap space, free agents:
Texans - $5m in cap space, free agents:
Saints, -$47m in cap space, free agents:
I don't see any "Must signs" from the Saints. We do have a small handful of "Must replaces" though. To Mickey's point though, you can clearly see that the other teams are losing a lot more prime free agents/starter types than we are.
And this doesn't even conclude the fact that we signed free agents and guys with the full intention of restructuring them, which we simply haven't done yet, while other teams have their contracts more centered on the present.
This is going to sound negative to some of you but it is not my intention. It’s simply how I feel about the state of our team, how the leagues best teams manage their teams and the direction we should be going.
Ok, so how many players are under contract for each team, because that is what Loomis was referring to.
Saints 62
Texans 58
Chiefs 50
Bucs 61
Ravens 53
Eagles 59
The Chiefs are definitely the worse off as they only have 50 under contract. But their problem comes with how much success they’ve had. They’ve won their divisions 9 years in a row and have been to the Super Bowl 5 out of the last 6 years. Their players are more in demand and command bigger contracts to retain. Their best players are under contract and they’ll fill the bottom through the draft. If they lose one or two, they’re largely fine because they have a core they can afford for now and most importantly they win. They may end up in trouble soon for the same reasons we started to in 2019. But it will be worth the rebuild because of their success. No doubt their fans will think it was worth it.
And of all of those free agents you listed, how many will those teams prioritize resigning? Each of those teams will prioritize a couple of their best players that are in their primes and let the rest test leave in free agency. They’ll draft some replacements and fill the bottom of the roster with cheaper players. The rest will go on to get contracts from other teams like the Jaguars, the Raiders and Titans that have cap space and are trying to improve.
Now look at the Saints roster. They have free agents that they might not even care to have back and other teams might not want either. How many do they have under contract that we would release to get younger if we could in order to sign the scraps of the winning teams? A bunch, but they can’t because the team’s books are screwed up. You can’t convince me that they actively want to keep Cam, Demario, Tyrann, and Taysom until their wheels fall off. And I don’t believe that they don’t regret that Carr contract and wouldn’t kick the can if they didn’t have to. Yet that’s what we’re doing and they are all close to falling off a cliff.
The point is that the good teams are letting their older players cycle out and keep their best young players on the team. We can’t even be talked about in the same breath as those teams because we are lacking in young talent and are stuck with our old players contracts. The real apples to oranges is that those other teams are ALL under the cap, winning with sustained success over years and have roster flexibility in the right places and we have none of those things.