dead money kills us again (2 Viewers)

[NatureBoy]

After all of the recent interviews i've watched SP do.(Kay Adams, the Herd, WDSU,etc...)It sounds to me like he's looking for another situation like he had here in NOLA. Great ownership(Ms. Gayle, will give anything to keep winning ways), great GM(Loomis is a salary cap genius and SP's best friend) It seems to me that if he wants $20mil per year? Ms. Gayle will give it to him to come back! He will never find a better situation anywhere than right here! I say let him do what he wants for a while, but i think he may end up back here in NOLA. Then again maybe not........................

What she can’t give him is a clean path to building a roster and landing a franchise QB. Our cash and assets are mortgaged to a large degree. He knows that. He helped us get in to that position. Why would he come back to a problem he was trying to escape?

 

[SRAddict]

I think it’s because we weren’t able to make a splashy trade on the eve of the deadline because of money issues.

At 3-5 though, despite the putrid division, I’m glad we aren’t gambling on a trade. Even if he had the cash, I prefer when we stay out of the trade stuff.

Yea that makes sense.

 

[El Caliente]

Except imagine that each of those credit cards has a negative interest rate that gets more and more favorable every year

The interest rate gets more favorable, yet the tab still needs to be paid off.

 

[Saint Spud]

The interest rate gets more favorable, yet the tab still needs to be paid off.

Never argued otherwise.

But the Saints’ philosophy is that you can push each “tab” into a year in which a. It’s a smaller % of your cap and b. It better matches other assets/liabilities.

For example, this year, we are paying off Armstead and Brees. So their numbers look like “bad” dead cap hits. But we pushed back other cap hits to balance it out.

Next year, we’ll have other guys who take up for some “bad” dead money. But then they’ll be off the books.

It’s all in how you stagger it. And Loomis and Harley are great at it.

 

[saintsmarchin]

You better believe that they are already looking at marketing and bringing in Archie Manning's son. They are gonna let this whole thing collapse when they think he's going to be drafted.

 

[Saintcd]

Never argued otherwise.

But the Saints’ philosophy is that you can push each “tab” into a year in which a. It’s a smaller % of your cap and b. It better matches other assets/liabilities.

For example, this year, we are paying off Armstead and Brees. So their numbers look like “bad” dead cap hits. But we pushed back other cap hits to balance it out.

Next year, we’ll have other guys who take up for some “bad” dead money. But then they’ll be off the books.

It’s all in how you stagger it. And Loomis and Harley are great at it.

The caps going up, but you better believe that players contracts are going up as well. That eats right into that plan of lower percentage of cap.

 

[NS_Saint]

It’s like maxing out the $5k limit on your credit card, and rolling that balance to your new $9k credit card. Then you max out that credit card, and roll that balance on to your new $15k credit card, and you proceed to max that out. You never pay off any of those cards, you just roll your balances to a new card even though ultimately you are going to have to pay off all that debt.

But hey, at least you are showing those credit cards you aren’t afraid to utilize a credit card.

Except it really doesn't work like that. Corporate accounting isn't the same as balancing your personal budget

 

[Saint Spud]

The caps going up, but you better believe that players contracts are going up as well. That eats right into that plan of lower percentage of cap.

The cap went from $182 million last year to $208 million this year to a projected $225 million next year.

Players salaries haven’t jumped that much lol.

And even if they do, then it still means the dead $ were pushing into the future is a smaller percentage of both the cap AND current player salaries.

 

[El Caliente]

Except it really doesn't work like that. Corporate accounting isn't the same as balancing your personal budget.

Please enlightened the class Professor.

 

[saint_drago]

Whatever. I have spoken out against our can kicking before and gotten nothing but crap for it. Apparently I didn't understand....

I know exactly how you feel. Any time i talked about the long term viability of staying "All In" I would be shot down with, "You just don't understand how the cap works". Well I always understood how the cap works, it's not that difficult to understand. You don't have to be a brain scientist or a rocket surgeon to understand the cap. My question was never can Loomis keep kicking the can, my question was should he keep kicking the can.

It didn't seem ideal to be starting every offseason digging out of a 50-80 million dollar hole just to get under the cap. I assumed that when Drew retired the all in philosophy would go with him. And then when SP left I was sure that our all in days were behind us. Instead they went all in, again. Except this time they weren't sacrificing the future for a legitimate shot at a championship with a first ballot HoF QB and the best HC in the team's history. This time they were going all in with Jameis Winston. They went all in on a stone cold bluff.

What's done is done. Now they are stuck with these huge cap hits and dead money. They will be forced to keep restructuring contracts to get under the cap and field a team. Even if they wanted to blow it up and start over, they can't. To turn this thing around they have to make every pick count. They have to hit on some UDFAs and they have to find the answer to the QB question. The good news is that we have some of the best talent evaluators in the NFL and they'll make the most of our picks. Of course that's assuming SP doesn't poach them when he picks his next team.

 

[Lord Stanley]

The cap went from $182 million last year to $208 million this year to a projected $225 million next year.

Players salaries haven’t jumped that much lol.

And even if they do, then it still means the dead $ were pushing into the future is a smaller percentage of both the cap AND current player salaries.

Not only that, but the cap escalates for all 32 teams not just the Saints. It means the other teams who aren't as or over the cap have additional resources to target the better FAs vs. us. We're in the "pay the debt" off years and need to focus on populating the roster as much as possible with rookie contracts.

 

[No2DC]

I know exactly how you feel. Any time i talked about the long term viability of staying "All In" I would be shot down with, "You just don't understand how the cap works". Well I always understood how the cap works, it's not that difficult to understand. You don't have to be a brain scientist or a rocket surgeon to understand the cap. My question was never can Loomis keep kicking the can, my question was should he keep kicking the can.

It didn't seem ideal to be starting every offseason digging out of a 50-80 million dollar hole just to get under the cap. I assumed that when Drew retired the all in philosophy would go with him. And then when SP left I was sure that our all in days were behind us. Instead they went all in, again. Except this time they weren't sacrificing the future for a legitimate shot at a championship with a first ballot HoF QB and the best HC in the team's history. This time they were going all in with Jameis Winston. They went all in on a stone cold bluff.

What's done is done. Now they are stuck with these huge cap hits and dead money. They will be forced to keep restructuring contracts to get under the cap and field a team. Even if they wanted to blow it up and start over, they can't. To turn this thing around they have to make every pick count. They have to hit on some UDFAs and they have to find the answer to the QB question. The good news is that we have some of the best talent evaluators in the NFL and they'll make the most of our picks. Of course that's assuming SP doesn't poach them when he picks his next team.

It's like getting a new credit card to pay off your old one or if you keep refinancing your home. I understand we have to do what we need but with the Drew era over I think we should try a more balanced model.

 

[SWJJ]

Really its 30 million dead cap on 4 players (Armstead, Brees, Jenkins, Winston) and 6 million on the other 16.

 

[NS_Saint]

Please enlightened the class Professor.

Teams have tools they can use to shift money around like turning a portion of a players base salary into a prorated signing bonus and spread that out over the length of the contract.

Teams can also extend contracts to spread some of that money out over time

 

[dtc]

The interest rate gets more favorable, yet the tab still needs to be paid off.

Maybe for you and I, but the NFL has a perpetually increasing income stream and there's no finish line.

People keep trying to equate the cap in the NFL to a personal credit card and it's not.