Elvis' 2025 cap and roster cleanup proposal (41 Viewers)

[Stalwart385]

Those 2026 void year cap hits are coming regardless for a few of those players and the additional amounts added from 2025 restructures are all paid for and then some by reducing Carr's 2026 cap hit.

You reduce Carr's hit in 2026 by 30 mil. That's the number. Now how many expiring contracts did you just restructure? All that additional push back subtracts from that 30 mil.

In the end you'll still be significantly below the cap and you won't see much difference for all the ridiculous sacrifice.

You can wish it to happen all you want and try to convince yourself it's smart. Just remember it will never happen in the real world.

 

[Stalwart385]

Because we don't have any money LOL.

Any coach that's going to take this job knows our cap situation. It's been reported multiple times that any new coach will have a grace period because of our cap and QB room.

We do if we don't do this insanity.

 

[St. Widge]

We have resigned our own guys and found value free agents every year. We don't go into drafts with gapping holes. Not with this plan.

A 5th rd qb who couldn't play two quarters of football without falling apart and no competition. Yeah good thing you can't sign FAs I guess cause you ain't convincing anybody.

All this for no real benefit. The 26 numbers still work out about the same either way because you still have to push back that money somehow.

The rebuild is here whether you want it or not. There is no reason to wait until 2026 to do it and paying Carr a bunch of money for two years isn't going to help the rebuild. The benefit is moving up the rebuild for a year instead of spending another year with a likely below .500 record for another year. There is no benefit is waiting another year to do it and the only real cut is Carr which would allow us to find out what we have in Rattler. If he's good, the QB problem solved. If he's not then we know we need to draft a QB high in 2026 and we will draft high if Rattler isn't good and we need to move on.

So, the benefit is that we get into the rebuild now instead of wasting a year where you aren't going to be good anyway. And you basically have the same very low chance of being good this year without Carr. It's not like has has a long history of winning season here or anywhere else.

And we had gaping holes in the draft for the last several years.

 

[St. Widge]

We do if we don't do this insanity.

This is one giant overreaction to getting rid of Carr one year earlier than we were going to do it anyway.

 

[Stalwart385]

This is one giant overreaction to getting rid of Carr one year earlier than we were going to do it anyway.

Going into the offseason with a new coach, guys to resign and 500k in your pocket. Yeah it's not overreacting.

They'll restructure Carr so they have breathing room. They don't even have to start him. It's just the better financial move.

 

[texasjefe]

Good work Elvis. I found the notion of eating the giant dead cap burger in 2025 a decent and seemingly necessary move.

Day one of the 2025 league year and free agency are 32 days a away so we'll start to get some resolution soon on Carr, Jordan, Hill, Ramcyzk, et al.

We may also start to get a picture on the 2026 dead cap, and whether it's really going to be a 2 year effort to clean it up.

 

[Elvis]

You reduce Carr's hit in 2026 by 30 mil. That's the number. Now how many expiring contracts did you just restructure? All that additional push back subtracts from that 30 mil.

In the end you'll still be significantly below the cap and you won't see much difference for all the ridiculous sacrifice.

You can wish it to happen all you want and try to convince your self it's smart. Just remember it will never happen in the real world.

It's clear you haven't looked at the math or the contracts. I have, so I'll help you.

First, not all of the contracts are expiring with void years. $18.3 million of the restructures are coming from McCoy, Ruiz and Granderson who have multiple years left on their deals and that money will be spread across those years. AK has a small restructure and is under contract in 2026 and his hit would come in 2027.

The rest of the restructures add up to less than $20 million in new dead money from void years in 2026. Leaving the team without any of the bad contracts and more cap space. It's a one year make over on par with what Denver just did.

Second, what is the ridiculous sacrifice am I suggesting?

 

[WhoDat?DrewDat]

We do if we don't do this insanity.

So you instead want us to spend what little cap we will have on FAs and kicking the can further down the road?

Doing the same thing over and over? What's the definition of insanity again?

 

[Elvis]

Going into the offseason with a new coach, guys to resign and 500k in your pocket. Yeah it's not overreacting.

They'll restructure Carr so they have breathing room. They don't even have to start him. It's just the better financial move.

$500k? You didn't read the whole $42 million in June part I guess.

 

[Stalwart385]

It's clear you haven't looked at the math or the contracts. I have, so I'll help you.

First, not all of the contracts are expiring with void years. $18.3 million of the restructures are coming from McCoy, Ruiz and Granderson who have multiple years left on their deals and that money will be spread across those years. AK has a small restructure and is under contract in 2026 and his hit would come in 2027.

The rest of the restructures add up to less than $20 million in new dead money from void years in 2026. Leaving the team without any of the bad contracts and more cap space. It's a one year make over on par with what Denver just did.

Second, what is the ridiculous sacrifice am I suggesting?

Exactly now hopefully your beginning to see the numbers yourself. What Ive been telling you for months. How much are you really gaining? 10 mil maybe if that. Just so you can make a childish statement.

If you don't realize what the sacrifice is by now you still arent listening. I'm done explaining why this doesn't work.

 

[Stalwart385]

$500k? You didn't read the whole $42 million in June part I guess.

Good luck with that, see how that would work out

 

[Elvis]

Good work Elvis. I found the notion of eating the giant dead cap burger in 2025 a decent and seemingly necessary move.

Day one of the 2025 league year and free agency are 32 days a away so we'll start to get some resolution soon on Carr, Jordan, Hill, Ramcyzk, et al.

We may also start to get a picture on the 2026 dead cap, and whether it's really going to be a 2 year effort to clean it up.

In a way, what I'm suggesting is the natural progression from what we did last year with Jameis, Michael Thomas and Lattimore. We're going to eat $48 million in dead cap this year in those contracts. So why not split the rest between this year and next year if we can?

And you're completely right. We will see what their plan is in very short order. I suspect we'll see some extensions of the players with sizable enough cap hits that we'd like to keep beyond 2025 happen first. Like Shaheed, Taylor, and Olave. Maybe one of Chase Young or Juwan Johnson.

 

[Elvis]

Exactly now hopefully your beginning to see the numbers yourself. What Ive been telling you for months. How much are you really gaining? 10 mil maybe if that. Just so you can make a childish statement.

If you don't realize what the sacrifice is by now you still arent listening. I'm done explaining why this doesn't work.

Ok, I think you're getting a little emotional now. And you can't be done with explaining if you've never explained anything in the first place.

 

[ravenblade23x]

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.

Lets say you keep Carr and most of the roster intact for the next two years. What is the realistic best case for the team? Maybe we win the South? Maybe sneak out a playoff victory? The ceiling for this team is just not that high. Let's say we do win the South in 25-26, what then? Do we resign Carr. By 27 we are likely moving on or have moved on from Mathieu, Davis, Hill and Kamara. Not sure I see the upside of keeping this core together for a small chance at winning the division.

Carr is a fine QB, I think in the right support system with the right talent he could be a good QB, but I don't think he is the future for the Saints. By moving on from Carr now, it forces the team to start thinking about the long term future at QB. Give Rattler a year to see if he can develop and then if he does not got get the QB that Moore wants to build around.

Underhill made a good point about the Steelers on a pod the other day, about how they have a great organization that always has a winning record but have been unable to make any real SB run. Yeah it's nice when when you keep making the playoffs but even that can get stagnate after some time. Caught in this loop of always being good enough to win 9-12 games a year but never good enough to win it all.

I don't want want the Saints to get into this stagnate loop of mediocrity. Sometimes you just have to pull the band aid off.