NOF: Saints in position to get under the cap with ease and create another $30+ million in cap space to add new players (1 Viewer)

[St. Geezy]

Loomis was on record saying he wanted to keep Trey but the numbers would need to work. Trey only got $16m guaranteed, it's almost pitiful that we couldn't sign him for that. At the time 45 edge rushers had more guaranteed money on their contracts than he did.

We gave more guaranteed money to Granderson after just two games this season.

Here we go again with the Trey Hendrickson example, which occurred during the most unique financial off-season ever, where we had our highest paid player retire, had an abnormally great draft class all come up for contracts, and had a -$30+ million swing on the salary cap due to an unprecedented global pandemic at the same time.

Why is this always the go-to when clearly these were some extraordinary circumstances?

 

[Rouxble]

Imagine if we had the flexibility to keep Trey Hendrickson and Terron Armstead... 2023 Saints would be playing this week with just those two players... the mic was dropped and it broke. No more mics.

Assuming Armstead was healthy of course. I would venture to guess we'd have more sacks, more passing TD's, and more wins with those two guys playing.

 

[St. Geezy]

Imagine if we had the flexibility to keep Trey Hendrickson and Terron Armstead... 2023 Saints would be playing this week with just those two players... the mic was dropped and it broke. No more mics.

If by flexibility you mean having a "healthy cap," then that means keeping those two costs you several other current players. Same problem, different framing.

 

[kcirdor]

Here we go again with the Trey Hendrickson example, which occurred during the most unique financial off-season ever, where we had our highest paid player retire, had an abnormally great draft class all come up for contracts, and had a -$30+ million swing on the salary cap due to an unprecedented global pandemic at the same time.

Why is this always the go-to when clearly these were some extraordinary circumstances?

Here it is "IT AINT A PROBLEM UNTIL IT's A PROBLEM..." bull fleece pullovers excuse. Bull pants.

 

[St. Geezy]

Assuming Armstead was healthy of course. I would venture to guess we'd have more sacks, more passing TD's, and more wins with those two guys playing.

And this is where the circular argument starts, because you are both framing this as if you'd simply be plugging those two players onto our current roster, which clearly would not be the case.

 

[St. Widge]

The CBA has a cap floor that requires all teams to spend 89% of the cap over a 4 years period. Can a cheap team save a little more money spending less? Sure. In reality the 11% they'd gain in salaries over that 4 years period is less than they'd gain if they spent 95-100% and their teams were good. If the Saints were good, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Our problem is that our roster is the most expensive in the league AND not even good enough to get to the playoffs in the weakest division in the league and with the one of the easiest schedules on record.

I agree our roster isn't as good as it costs. But it's where we are because out better players have older and more expensive. But, a reset is coming when the older guys retire anyway so I don't really see the point in moving on from them when they are still our best players. And some of it is going to start this year when MT, likely Lattimore, and maybe AK go. Obviously that's not all to start reclaiming cap flexibility, but that will happen to some extent. And when Demario and Cam hang them up, it will move more in that direction. The key will still be finding talent to replace them.

Still this franchise is going to continue spending every dime it can to make this team good. My issue with them is that they aren't evaluating talent properly and they are continuing to allows a bad HC to control the franchise and waste all that money. In the end of the day, it's not my money so I don't really care how they spend it and until it means that they can't keep a good players or they can't sign a good players, I don't care how they choose to do it. And, it's not like those other teams with more flexibility don't sometimes have issues with keeping or signing players. As I said, there are many ways to manage the cap but they all fall apart without good coaching and talent evaluation.

 

[ItFan]

Well, we're looking at best 6-11, more realistically, 5-12 next year, DA is gone and we reboot. So I'd eat whatever I had to eat this upcoming year to make it palatable for 2025.

Same. I just underlined how Loomising is not sustainable in the long run, prolonging contracts past their expiration date

 

[Rouxble]

Here we go again with the Trey Hendrickson example, which occurred during the most unique financial off-season ever, where we had our highest paid player retire, had an abnormally great draft class all come up for contracts, and had a -$30+ million swing on the salary cap due to an unprecedented global pandemic at the same time.

Why is this always the go-to when clearly these were some extraordinary circumstances?

LOL, I didn't bring up Trey. And every single team was facing the same 2021 cap we did. Of course we didn't plan for it to go down, but we were planning to be considerably over it even if it went up.

It's too bad really, the Bengals got a steal by maintaining cap flexibility. They were $50m below us on the above chart, but they closed the gap with extensions for Burrow, Wilson, and Hendrickson.

 

[kcirdor]

How many titles have we won with no flexibilty?

It works guys.. it works!

 

[St. Widge]

LOL, I didn't bring up Trey. And every single team was facing the same 2021 cap we did. Of course we didn't plan for it to go down, but we were planning to be considerably over it even if it went up.

It's too bad really, the Bengals got a steal by maintaining cap flexibility. They were $50m below us on the above chart, but they closed the gap with extensions for Burrow, Wilson, and Hendrickson.

Did you chose to ignore what I wrote about Hendrickson or did you just not read it?

According to Underhill, we had the money to sign Hedrickson, we chose not to because the Saints though he was just an effort guy and not very good. It was a terrible job of talent evaluation, not a cap issue.

And the Bengals had that vaunted flexibility because the had Burrow and Chase on rookie contracts and apparently were spending no money on an O-Line.

 

[St. Widge]

Imagine if we had the flexibility to keep Trey Hendrickson and Terron Armstead... 2023 Saints would be playing this week with just those two players... the mic was dropped and it broke. No more mics.

Pick the mic back up backwardsroderick because you are once again misguided.

Again we did have the flexibility to keep Hendrickson, we chose not to because of terrible talent evaluation. And it actually cost us more cap space to let Armstead go than to keep him. They didn't want to pay him because of his injury history. They thought they could get better by drafting a LT. They were obviously very wrong, but it was not because they didn't have the cap space the decision was made despite the fact that it cost them more cap space.

 

[St. Widge]

Loomis was on record saying he wanted to keep Trey but the numbers would need to work. Trey only got $16m guaranteed, it's almost pitiful that we couldn't sign him for that. At the time 45 edge rushers had more guaranteed money on their contracts than he did.

We gave more guaranteed money to Granderson after just two games this season.

Loomis lied. Are you shocked by that? He's not going to come out and say we think Trey is an average player that got lucky this year with effort so we chose not to pay him that much.

Trey did only get $16 million guaranteed they could have easily afforded it if they wanted to. And don't you think that is clear after the Granderson contract?

 

[kcirdor]

Where is the fire Loomis Billboard? I already know we are stuck with him.

 

[latechsaint26]

The method works. We simply use cap space from the future while other teams use current cap space, however some teams are starting to catch on to what we do.

It’s the same difference, same challenges, just annoying cosmetics to people that aren’t following the accounting closely or seeing that other teams have the same problems we do, just from a different circumstance since they’re confining themselves to singular years.

We just need to get better at WHO we are paying and selecting in drafts.

The books will be a lot cleaner by 2026 though.

It’s actually smarter the saints way because next years budget is bigger. It’s not only not bad, it’s a clear advantage

 

[NatureBoy]

An endless practice that certainly yields minimal yearly relief. The question shouldn’t be if it yields us space, but how much space compared to the rest of the league. We continually have to let valuable players go to sign bargain guys, with the exception of a high priced guy every now and then. Its not a recipe for getting better and keeping up with other teams.

It’s never been about cap space, it’s about your ability to compete with others, which is always overloooked.

The hole just keeps getting deeper.