Let's talk salary cap (5 Viewers)

[SuperSaint]

I agree with your post, we have talent, the problem is keeping them healthy. You also have to take into account the annual cap increases.

I agree also, better to stand pat for now and let the expiring contracts work off the books and see where we are, Cam will have to take a giant pay cut if he wants to be here next year.

 

[solarbear88]

• Cut Carr as Post 6/1. $30M savings.
• Cut Lattimore as Post 6/1. $18M savings.
• Cut Jordan as Post 6/1. $11M savings.
• Cut Ramczyk. $6M savings.
• Cut J. Williams. $1.5M savings.
• Cut F. Moreau. $2.5M savings.
• Cut C. Wilson. $2.4M savings.
• Cut K Saunders. $2.6M savings.
• Cut J.T. Gray. $2.1M savings.
• Other misc. savings: Shepherd (750K), K. Miller (1M), Z. Wood (1M), Saldiviri (1M), D. Jackson (1M), Howden (1M), Rigeway (1M)
• And basically any of the young guys that made the team are 1M also (Holker, Payton, Ford, Rattler, Hayball, etc). But of course keep in mind cutting them doens't do much good because those are parts you have to replace. So if you're cutting most of these 1M guys, it's because the new staff just doesn't see them as part of the team.

I suspect Lattimore will be traded.
Given his new attractive contract, AK might be traded.
Cam will retire, how that affects the cap is a bit of a mystery.
Demario may retire, how that affects the cap is a bit of a mystery.
Carr will be here costing us money.
Taysom will be here costing us more than he is worth.

Going to be an ugly couple of years if our poor drafting continues. We need good young players and Loomis/Ireland have been bad at finding them.

 

[bayoumilitia]

the avalanche of injuries proved to be more devastating than anything. our 2-0 start wasn't hampered by the coaches.

Ummm we beat statistically the worst team in football, Carolina that just returned the favor and a Dallas team that wait for it…. Actually sucks

With all the injuries, we outgained Carolina by over 150 yards won the turnover battle, led in almost every category and had the lead. No other team in NFL has ever lost until the Saints did. Teams were 275-0 with those stats so nah maybe the coaches didn’t hamper our 2-0 start but they definitely failed the team. We caught two bad teams off guard with our new offense that Carolina and Dallas had basically no game film to scheme against us. Many of us were predicting that we’d catch a few teams off guard and most of us would have taken 3-4 record with just beating Carolina Tampa and Atlanta

 

[bayoumilitia]

I suspect Lattimore will be traded.
Given his new attractive contract, AK might be traded.
Cam will retire, how that affects the cap is a bit of a mystery.
Demario may retire, how that affects the cap is a bit of a mystery.
Carr will be here costing us money.
Taysom will be here costing us more than he is worth.

Going to be an ugly couple of years if our poor drafting continues. We need good young players and Loomis/Ireland have been bad at finding them.

Even trading Kamara costs us money

 

[bayoumilitia]

 

[Geldo]

Sportrac do a great interactive where you can see what each cut costs the team now and in the future and is pretty easy to use to show the various alternatives we face.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/cap/_/year/2024

It certainly gives you an idea of the big challenges we face in the off-season. It woulds be pretty easy to do the usual kick the can economics but this won't solve the long-term issue of not being able to bring in starters rather than decent players who might flourish in the scheme...

If you want to do radical surgery and try and get it all fixed asap then the results are pretty scary. I did a test run and to get under the cap without extensions etc I had to cut/retire: Cam, Ram, Turner, Young, J. Johnson, Wilson, Williams, Saunders and Taysom.
That still sent enough dead money into the future that we were £26 million over for 2026 (something that would be easily sorted by extensions etc). I didn't cut Carr because I figured the cost-benefits of cutting him before 2026 weren't favourable but obviously many will disagree.

The biggest issue is if we do radical surgery like that is we go into the draft in 2025 with massive needs: Starters at DE, OG/OT (already an issue), TE, NT/DT, WR (Olave may retire too). Then we need high-quality depth at: DE, DT, FS, SS, WR, TE, OL

 

[saint_drago]

Most of us are fine with it taking 2-3 years. As long as we have a plan.

Exactly. For the love of god this. I was totally prepared for some lean years when Brees and SP left. I expected it. It was a logical expectation. We had the greatest run in franchise history but the window closed. I assumed Loomis would abandoned the all in strategy as soon as Brees retired. I assumed they would stop putting themselves in a bind with the cap. I assumed they would stop trading draft picks willy nilly. For some reason I assumed the Saints would rebuild and focus on the future. Instead, they went all in with Dennis Allen and Jameis Winston after trying to trade the farm for Deshaun Watson lol. Who could've known that wasn't a good idea?

It's time to abandon the all in deal once and for all. Get back to the basics. This team isn't a Super Bowl contender. Stop operating like you're just a player or two away from winning it all.

 

[JackDiesel]

The draft is about to be more important than ever, we need so many starters/depth. The only time we can stand pat is for a franchise QB, otherwise we need to maximize the number of picks we get in the first three rounds without trading up.

 

[504gks]

Thats what so many fans don't get. Firing Allen is good but doesn't do much for the future because mickey screwed the team so hard with bad cap management.

Mickey lost his mind extending dudes like Jordan and Davis and Ram and Carr.

To be so delusional to think you could win with Carr and Allen is mind boggling

Ram was fact denial. They knew is knee was getting worse eevry year-Stupid! Carr I would have never done!

 

[504gks]

Exactly. For the love of god this. I was totally prepared for some lean years when Brees and SP left. I expected it. It was a logical expectation. We had the greatest run in franchise history but the window closed. I assumed Loomis would abandoned the all in strategy as soon as Brees retired. I assumed they would stop putting themselves in a bind with the cap. I assumed they would stop trading draft picks willy nilly. For some reason I assumed the Saints would rebuild and focus on the future. Instead, they went all in with Dennis Allen and Jameis Winston after trying to trade the farm for Deshaun Watson lol. Who could've known that wasn't a good idea?

It's time to abandon the all in deal once and for all. Get back to the basics. This team isn't a Super Bowl contender. Stop operating like you're just a player or two away from winning it all.

we cant get out for years.. And our drafting sucks.

 

[504gks]

I suspect Lattimore will be traded.
Given his new attractive contract, AK might be traded.
Cam will retire, how that affects the cap is a bit of a mystery.
Demario may retire, how that affects the cap is a bit of a mystery.
Carr will be here costing us money.
Taysom will be here costing us more than he is worth.

Going to be an ugly couple of years if our poor drafting continues. We need good young players and Loomis/Ireland have been bad at finding them.

Paying Taysom and AK is probly dumb, but at least they haev heart and produce...

 

[soggymoss84]

So we all know (most of us anyway) that the Saints cap management leaves something to be desired. Per Over the Cap we are 62 million over the cap for 2025 before we even finish out this season. I don't remember which one said it, but 104.5 made a reference last week that 8 players over the age of 30 account for over 108 million in cap space for 2025. I know everyone thinks the cap is fake and Mickey can just magickly manipulate it to do whatever he wants but signing a free agent and actually managing the cap responsibly are two different things.

So in order to get under the cap you more than likely have to re-structure contracts once again kicking the preverbal can down the road shoe stringing future cap to just comply with that years numbers. We have a mid talent QB that we choose to extend that has cap hits of 50 million, 28 million and 17 million starting next year. We have an all time great player in Cam Jordan who has a cap hit of 23 million, 15 million, 7 million and 2.3 million starting next year and chances are he's not going to be around next year. We have Demario (again who's an all time great) who has a cap number of 17 million, 9 million, 4.5 million and 1.5 million starting in 2025. Taysom Hill, 18 million, 10 million, 4 million starting in 2025. The list goes on and on and on and on.

There's no easy way out of his. As attractive as 1 of 32 jobs is any coach coming in has to realize and accept a lot. Derrick Carr will be on this roster possibly through 2026. It'll be 2 possibly 3 years (assuming they actually do it) before the cap is manageable and a large portion of 2025 and 2026's cap space will be allotted to players that either will be on the severe decline or more than likely not on the team at all. I said this in another thread, we will need a 2006/2017 draft just to be able to tread water.

Like it or not, this is not an overnight or even a 1 season fix.

Here’s a thread I made a couple weeks ago outlining how we can get the cap back under control in a year, but it would take a complete commitment to a teardown

How we could achieve clearing the cap sheet and starting the rebuild with 100+ million in cap space for 2026 (Long read)

First off, Dennis Allen has to go. I would prefer to see Loomis step down as GM and either Ireland or Harley get promoted in his place. The entire defensive coaching staff and training staff should be let go also. Hire Ben Johnson, I don’t care what the price is. Hopefully Ben will want to...

saintsreport.com

 

[St. Geezy]

Restructure Derek Carr, Cam Jordan retires, Ryan Ramcyzk retires…you are now cap compliant.

Next, restructure guys you plan to have here anyway, strictly as needed…

Eric McCoy 6.7m saved
Carl Granderson 5.7m saved
Ceasar Ruiz 6.4m saved
Pete Werner 2.5m saved
Rasheed Shaheed 2.1m saved
Tyrann Mathieu 4.5m saved
Demario Davis 5.5m saved


That’s now $33.4m in cap space available to sign who we want…and this is without cutting anyone, no June 1st designations, no trading anyone, and several more possible restructures available. Just flat out building on what we have already.

The salary cap is just a 5-year accounting log that extends year after year endlessly and also allows you to be over the cap in future seasons in perpetuity; it is not a hard cap. Stop freaking out just because our log/ledger CURRENTLY shows a certain number. That number has just not been managed yet; the team has just not revealed to the league/turned in the paperwork yet.

People using this past off-season and roster condition as a direct product of the cap situation are not looking at this correctly.

Our roster is “bad” (arguable in itself) because we aren’t drafting well, may have signed a couple of regrets, have an abnormal number of key injuries, and poor coaching/development, not the accounting work.

 

[St. Geezy]

So in order to get under the cap you more than likely have to re-structure contracts once again kicking the preverbal can down the road shoe stringing future cap to just comply with that years numbers.

Listen to what you just said.

Paraphrased - “In order to get under the cap, you have to string up figure cap to comply with this year’s numbers.”

Does this practice suddenly become illegal in those future years to where you can’t do that again, and again, and again? No. It’s an endless cycle.

You have restructures, you have void years, you have LTBE and ULTBE incentives…there are endless mechanisms available to always be able to borrow from future years, and even better, the cap number keeps going way up each year.

We need to draft better, stay healthy, and coach better. Focus on the who we sign as opposed to static hard numbers.

We aren’t the only team stuck with contracts. Teams aren’t signing players to $135m contract and cutting him after two seasons; it just doesn’t happen except for with SP, and look at the huge cap hit that took that was arguably even worse than us being stuck with the player. Same cap hamstring, boxed with different cosmetics.

It’s easy to criticize EVERYTHING and EVERYONE when things aren’t going well, but lack of team success doesn’t necessarily mean that EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is the problem, cap management included.

I would have thought the fact that we signed the game’s highest paid free agent available in a year where we started off something like $99m over the cap would have demonstrated this by now. The dollars just aren’t something we should be this stressed about.

 

[solarbear88]

Here’s a thread I made a couple weeks ago outlining how we can get the cap back under control in a year, but it would take a complete commitment to a teardown

How we could achieve clearing the cap sheet and starting the rebuild with 100+ million in cap space for 2026 (Long read)

First off, Dennis Allen has to go. I would prefer to see Loomis step down as GM and either Ireland or Harley get promoted in his place. The entire defensive coaching staff and training staff should be let go also. Hire Ben Johnson, I don’t care what the price is. Hopefully Ben will want to...

saintsreport.com

I guess the thing is that you will have to put a product out next year. The product would be seriously worse than we have now, if that is imaginable. Your average ticket buying fan isn't going to show up for seasons of current Patriots level performance. Can't really run a business or sports team like this, even if it is better in the long run.