Offline
Never, because the Saints are not in cap hell. I just don't understand why after 20 years folks don't see it for what is: a salary cap optimization strategy to put the best product on the field each and every season.
This is not happenstance. It's a deliberate cash cap accounting strategy to retain high level productive talent as long as possible while having the flexibility to adjust to current conditions.
It does have one flaw, which is the dead money that is incured when the team and the player finally parts ways. But even that can be managed using the post June 1st route.
I just never understand what fans who think we are in cap hell think we should do instead. Keep $60 million of cap space in our pocket (looking at you Chicago Bears) while other teams who spend near the cap each and every year field better teams with better talent?
The problem is folks fall into the fallacy of seeing a published NFL contract number and thinking that it's guaranteed when it's not. Just like here with Peat having a $18.8 million salary. That money was never going to be paid. It was never going to be accounted for on the cap. But right after the seasons ends, salaries like that are placed on the projected salary cap for the next season.
The Saints use 3 specific strategies to manage those projected salary dollars. If it's a player they plan to keep long term and are going to pay the money to, then they do a restructure converting that salary into a new signing bonus. That spreads the cap hit across future years, lowering the cap for this season. Players love it because it guarantees their salary for the year and they get the money in March instead of having to wait until the season to get paid. Also the team can do these unilaterally. You can see this year's laundry list: Cam, Lattimore, DD, Taysom, and the like. These simple structures are done within the confines of the existing contract. So, there's no new money, or no new years.
Strategy 2 is a contract extension, also called a maximum restructure. It changes either the money of the contract or the years on it. For both Peat and MT13 this year, this resulted in pay cuts on their previous contract money. But remember that unless the player is deserving of the money due to productivity, that's money that was never going to be paid anyway.
Door #3 is to cut the player and eat the dead money. For caps purposes, post June 1 cuts facilitate softening the cap hit in the current year.
Loomis and Khai Harley are accountants. They simply model the adjustments above for their high salaried players each year along with the pushed cap values from previous years to figure out the puzzle each off season. You can bet their spreadsheets project out into the void years for their current high value contracts to core players.
As such, there is no cap hell. It's not amazing that the Saints initial projection of the cap is $100+ million over and yet each and every year by the first day of the league year the team is in compliance. It's by design.
And none of it prevents the Saints from targeting the free agents they would like to get. Let's not forget that last year when the Saints were targeting Watson, they were supposedly in "cap hell". But just like this year with Carr, they would have navigated a path to get the player the contract needed while still managing the cap.
SFIAH
