Elvis' 2025 cap and roster cleanup proposal (14 Viewers)

[Elvis]

I know this will be controversial to some and we won't all agree that this is the way things should be done. This is what I would do to manage the roster and cap situation as the team enters a new era with a new head coach. I believe it's time to clean up the mess that was created over the last 5 or so years and give the next coach the quickest path to a clean slate to show us what he's got. None of this solves ALL of the problems. All I ask is that if you disagree, tell us what you would do to clean things up. If you like where we are, then this thread is probably not for you.

I am starting without touching the contracts of Carr, Cam Jordan or Ramczyk. We can get to within $10.25 million of cap compliant by restructuring some players and cutting only a couple of players. Many of the restructured players are under 30 years or are players we are likely to keep because of salary guarantees in 2025 anyway. The cuts I’ve listed just make sense as under performing players and the additional options listed below are to tackle the remaining $10.25 million.

Restructures

EDIT: Strangely, overthecap.com is no longer showing the same numbers that they were a few days ago. I've seen this happen before and I don't know why they change. They are still close, but not exact as I had them when this was first posted. It still get the team to the same exact place but the numbers I list as savings is different.

Player (Restructure Cap Savings, Already Guaranteed $ in 2025)

Erik McCoy ($8.43m, $0)
Demario Davis ($5.25m, $4,25)
Cesar Ruiz ($7.98m, $9.15m)
Carl Grandson ($6.56m, $7.73m)
Tyrann Mathieu ($5m, $1m)
Alvin Kamara ($1.735m, $3m)
Pete Werner ($3m, $4.25m)
Foster Moreau ($2.734m, $0)
Khaled Saunders ($2.23m, $0)
Rashid Shaheed ($3.1m, $0)
JT Gray ($1.345m, $0)

Cuts

Player (Cap Savings)

Jamal Williams ($1.23m)
Cedrick Wilson ($2.4m)

Additional options to get to cap compliance

The below options would be used in combination with each other to lower the rest of the $10.25m of negative cap by the deadline.

Player (mechanism for lowering cap)

Taysom Hill (pay cut)
Cameron Jordan (pay cut, if not released with a June 1 designation)
Alontae Taylor (extension with low first year $)
Rashid Shaheed (extension with low first year $, would replace his restructure from above)
Chris Olave (extension with low first year $)
Nathan Shepherd (cut or restructure)
Chase Young (re-sign to extension to lower 2025 dead $ hit)
Juwan Johnson (re-sign to extension to lower 2025 dead $ hit)
Various bottom of the roster players (cut)
______________________________________________________________________

The hypothetical additional moves I chose were:

1. Extend Juwan on a 3 year $14.2m deal with $7.2 in guarantees. That lowers his 2025 cap hit from $6.5 to $3.825. I don’t love this, but something had to be done.

2. Restructure Nathan Shepherd saving $3m.

3. Taysom pay cut to $5m. He’s 35 and isn’t going to be available for camp and won’t be able to sign to another team until healthy if he was cut. $5 guaranteed is better than nothing guaranteed.

These along with the other moves above gets us under by about $500k by the deadline without having touched Carr, Jordan or Ramczyk allowing for June 1st designations for Carr and Cam while remaining cap compliant. When June 1 hits, $42.7 million in cap comes back to sign new players. Overthecap shows there would be $88.4m of cap space in 2026, but I think there is an error in that it doesn’t show the increase from 2025 restructures in accelerated bonuses from void years as dead money, so it won’t be that high. But I don’t think we’ll be in the hole either.

This sets us up for much less cap juggling in the future though 2026 will have these restructures hit the books as dead money, they will be paid for by what we will save by not having Carr’s 2026 contract on the books and taking part of his hit in 2025.

 

[St. Widge]

That seems like a good plan. The only move I'm not a fan of is restructuring Nathan Shepherd, but that's mostly because I think we need to upgrade that position. But, he would be good depth so it's not a big deal. Extending Juwan Johnson is obviously controversial, but I do think there is a player in there if he can stay healthy and the next OC can figure out how to use him correctly. I'm not sure he should really be a TE since his blocking isn't great and our mediocre OL and issues at RT mean he would often have to stay in to block or chip before running routes.

 

[St. Geezy]

I know you and I disagree a lot on cap gymnastics but I just don’t see the need for a total tear down. We have $58m in 2026 to pull from and a whopping $219m to pull from in 2027, and you know how easily we tend to stretch dollars.

It seems like most of the cap issues will naturally take care of themselves over the next couple of seasons whether we tear it all down or not.

It feels like we would be tearing things down just for the sake of it with no real benefit other than maybe landing higher draft picks.

In your work, what happens if we go business as usual, restructure guys, keep Carr, sign a small handful of free agents?

From my perspective, we’d simply have less cap room to work with in 2026, for which we can reconcile with 2027’s large surplus.

I understand your goal here; I’m just not sure it’s worth intentionally sacrificing seasons to meet it. The benefit margin isn’t enough.

Now, if you are absolutely dead set on getting rid of Carr, that’s a different story (I personally believe we should keep him around while drafting his replacement in round 2 with a guy like Dart or Milroe and/or sign a guy to compete with him like Justin Fields). The work and sacrifice to get rid of Carr’s contract just doesn’t seem worth it.

I feel like this exercise sacrifices seasons to create as much cap space as possible without regard to how much new cap space is actually necessary.

 

[Elvis]

I know you and I disagree a lot on cap gymnastics but I just don’t see the need for a total tear down. We have $58m in 2026 to pull from and a whopping $219m to pull from in 2027, and you know how easily we tend to stretch dollars.

It seems like most of the cap issues will naturally take care of themselves over the next couple of seasons whether we tear it all down or not.

It feels like we would be tearing things down just for the sake of it with no real benefit other than maybe landing higher draft picks.

In your work, what happens if we go business as usual, restructure guys, keep Carr, sign a small handful of free agents?

From my perspective, we’d simply have less cap room to work with in 2026, for which we can reconcile with 2027’s large surplus.

I understand your goal here; I’m just not sure it’s worth intentionally sacrificing seasons to meet it. The benefit margin isn’t enough.

Now, if you are absolutely dead set on getting rid of Carr, that’s a different story (I personally believe we should keep him around while drafting his replacement in round 2 with a guy like Dart or Milroe and/or sign a guy to compete with him like Justin Fields). The work and sacrifice to get rid of Carr’s contract just doesn’t seem worth it.

All I ask is that if you disagree, tell us what you would do to clean things up. If you like where we are, then this thread is probably not for you.

 

[saintsmarchin]

youre a regular elon

 

[St. Geezy]

-

Sorry you don’t approve of my reply or question. Just trying to get an understanding of what the end goal is and an assessment of what the natural alternative looks like in comparison.

 

[Elvis]

Sorry you don’t approve of my reply or question. Just trying to get an understanding of what the end goal is and an assessment of what the natural alternative looks like in comparison.

That is not the premise of this thread. You like things the way they are. This thread is not for you.

 

[St. Geezy]

That is not the premise of this thread. You like things the way they are. This thread is not for you.

Having an understanding of the financial goal point of this thread is not the premise of the thread. Got it. SMH.

 

[Elvis]

Having an understanding of the financial goal point of this thread is not the premise of the thread. Got it. SMH.

Listen, it's tiresome to have to continually show ignored posts to see you arguing for something that isn't even the point of the thread. It's about roster and cap cleanup in 2025. You aren't contributing to that, just arguing that it shouldn't be done. I even asked politely to remain on that topic. Start your own thread about keeping Carr and kicking the can if you want. I promise to not post in it.

 

[St. Geezy]

Listen, it's tiresome to have to continually show ignored posts to see you arguing for something that isn't even the point of the thread. It's about roster and cap cleanup in 2025. You aren't contributing to that, just arguing that it shouldn't be done. I even asked politely to remain on that topic. Start your own thread about keeping Carr and kicking the can if you want. I promise to not post in it.

I am not “arguing” anything. Just trying to find out if you have a goal in mind (my initial interpretation may not have been right), if the premise is based on how we can cleanly get out of Carr’s contract, is there a certain dollar figure you’re trying to get to by a certain year, etc.

You put together an entire dissertation here and asked for feedback on what we would do, and I am simply asking what parameters are you working with for an end goal.

Sorry I even asked. Geesh.

 

[Elvis]

That seems like a good plan. The only move I'm not a fan of is restructuring Nathan Shepherd, but that's mostly because I think we need to upgrade that position. But, he would be good depth so it's not a big deal. Extending Juwan Johnson is obviously controversial, but I do think there is a player in there if he can stay healthy and the next OC can figure out how to use him correctly. I'm not sure he should really be a TE since his blocking isn't great and our mediocre OL and issues at RT mean he would often have to stay in to block or chip before running routes.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of those last moves either but they were easier to figure out than some of the others. It could easily be Chase Young, Shaheed, Taylor and Olave extensions in place of Shepherd and Juwan moves. Or even dumping a few bottom of the roster contracts, although that is hard because only top 51 count and if dumping those, other come up to replace them.

 

[saintfan1972]

Someone posted an article the other day about releasing players and cost cutting moves. Seemed a little easier to do in the article. Yours has a lot of moving parts that's not going to all work. But you did more work on it than I would. So kudos for the work

 

[St. Widge]

I know you and I disagree a lot on cap gymnastics but I just don’t see the need for a total tear down. We have $58m in 2026 to pull from and a whopping $219m to pull from in 2027, and you know how easily we tend to stretch dollars.

It seems like most of the cap issues will naturally take care of themselves over the next couple of seasons whether we tear it all down or not.

It feels like we would be tearing things down just for the sake of it with no real benefit other than maybe landing higher draft picks.

In your work, what happens if we go business as usual, restructure guys, keep Carr, sign a small handful of free agents?

From my perspective, we’d simply have less cap room to work with in 2026, for which we can reconcile with 2027’s large surplus.

I understand your goal here; I’m just not sure it’s worth intentionally sacrificing seasons to meet it. The benefit margin isn’t enough.

Now, if you are absolutely dead set on getting rid of Carr, that’s a different story (I personally believe we should keep him around while drafting his replacement in round 2 with a guy like Dart or Milroe and/or sign a guy to compete with him like Justin Fields). The work and sacrifice to get rid of Carr’s contract just doesn’t seem worth it.

I feel like this exercise sacrifices seasons to create as much cap space as possible without regard to how much new cap space is actually necessary.

To be fair, I don't think the above proposal is a "tear down". He's actually kept most of our big name players with few cuts. It even extends some of our younger building blocks like Olave, Shaheed, and Taylor. The only real cut is Carr and I'm not sure moving on from Carr counts as a tear down. In fact, I'd argue that keeping the vets and cutting Carr gives us around the same number of wins as keeping him and cutting the vets. And this would set us up to be more of a player in mid-level free agency in 2026.

 

[St. Geezy]

To be fair, I don't think the above proposal is a "tear down". He's actually kept most of our big name players with few cuts. It even extends some of our younger building blocks like Olave, Shaheed, and Taylor. The only real cut is Carr and I'm not sure moving on from Carr counts as a tear down. In fact, I'd argue that keeping the vets and cutting Carr gives us around the same number of wins as keeping him and cutting the vets. And this would set us up to be more of a player in mid-level free agency in 2026.

So the basis point target here is to not touch Carr’s contract, restructure others to get cap compliant, while sacrificing making significant moves this year to be able to make MORE significant moves next year?

 

[Elvis]

Someone posted an article the other day about releasing players and cost cutting moves. Seemed a little easier to do in the article. Yours has a lot of moving parts that's not going to all work. But you did more work on it than I would. So kudos for the work

All of the articles I've seen involved kicking Carr's can into 2026 which would be terrible. Even designating him a June 1 cut this year leaves the team with $28 million in dead money in 2026. If we restructure him the maximum amount in 2025, his dead money hit in 2026 would be nearly double that because we can't keep him in 2026 and pay him the $50 salary he's due plus his prorated bonus which would balloon to nearly $15 million. That's would be $65 million cap charge for him to play and $56 million to cut him in 2026. Admittedly that would only be if we restructured the maximum amount and we DON'T have to do that. But it's still way too much.