Still feels odd to me that we have opened up so much cap space

The Saints got into an unusual cap crunch around the 2020-2021 seasons because (a) Brees stayed on for the 2020 season instead of retiring, and (b) the 2020 or 2021 cap (I forget) actually dropped (due to COVID) instead of increasing as it had every other year of the current CBA.

The Brees void-year money still being on the Saints' books through (I should look it up, but I'll wing it) 2023 or so got a lot of attention and was easy clickbait fodder.

Without that bad-timing stuff** going down, the Saints' cap situation would've never gotten the media attention that it did. And now the story has run its course, but the Twitterverse never got the memo. Such is life.

** A pandemic leading to a year-over-year decrease in league revenue AND Brees staying on one season longer than the team planned. And without the NOLA No-Call ... Brees probably retires for sure after 2019 -- or even goes out as a champ after 2018, making the cap situation all the better. Oh well.