Saints could get to $14.61 million under the cap without restructuring Derek Carr, after Saints salary cap potentially increases by $5M

St. Geezy said

So we signed a lot of guys in 2022, signed the highest paid free agent in 2023 and a handful of role players (Williams and Saunders to name a couple), and in 2024 we declared we wanted to dial it back some prior to that offseason.

I don’t understand how you can say this belt-tightening has been more than a one year thing, which coincided with Loomis’ 2024 declaration.

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Loomis said the same thing the year he signed Mathieu and Landry. I think those guys becoming available when he did not expect it, made him stretch things out that year. The next year, he tried to trade for Watson and when that fell through he felt his only option was Carr because he still thought that roster had a shot. Despite that, he did not go out and sign mid-tier guys to support Carr. Instead, he stayed with a mediocre at best OL and WRs. Then last year he only signed Young to a bigish deal and that was only for one year. And they traded away Lattimore, because they didn't want to pay his big salary. His injury history had something to do with it, but if they were still all in, they would have kept him and gambled on his getting healthy like the Commanders, who are more or less all in right now, did.

That is vastly less then the Saints did in the years that they had Brees and Payton and they never would have let their best starting CB go during that time period. So I don't see how you can't see the belt tightening.