Saints restructure Ramczyk to vet minimum per Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap (1 Viewer)

[Elvis]

I think I am less of a “defender” of it in a vacuum and more of a guy that sees it as merely a different, more eye-catching version of the same problems everyone faces.

The problem with our system is that if you are up against the cap and go to bat and miss on a player, you have to live with a player you don’t want for an extra year or two. You have “borrowed from the future,” to help your present, and eventually that time and space has to be accounted for, whether it’s dead money or holding onto a player you would have never gotten in the first place for an extra year.

The problem with a “healthy cap” team that is up against the cap is they never sign that player in the first place. Or if they do have the space to sign them and they miss, they have a huge cap hit but aren’t willing to make moves to mitigate it because they have to keep their cap “healthy.”

I see your side’s argument for sure, don’t get me wrong, but I think ultimately there are consequences anytime you sign players to significant deals that you end up regretting, then compound it by not drafting well, staying healthy, and having competent coaching.

I am not trying to sell this as some huge advantage but more so as something that offers us a little more flexibility to make moves we deem necessary within the confines of the five year outlook prism rather than on being anal about keeping the books clean.

It’s easy for us to point to the Carr contract as something to hate, but the bottom line is the accounting system is what allowed us to sign a guy to a contract like that in the first place. It’s too bad it didn’t work out the way we hoped though, so now we pay the piper by (likely) keeping him around a year longer with an inflated number.

We agree more than you think, but I am more so in the “Blame the football people, not the accounting people that were told by the football people what they needed done” mindset.

I do see your pivot flexibility point 100%, but the pivoting will be pointless if you’re still making the same bad football judgment decisions.

I have to blame the accounting people. I had no problem with Carr's contract as it was written when he signed it. It was 4 years $150mil with $60 mil fully guaranteed at signing. But they knew they were going to have to restructure and guarantee him more money the following year. The accountants added the guaranteed $ in void years, not the football people. If we couldn't afford him without doing that, we shouldn't have done it and that falls at the feet of the GM.

And to be clear, I'm not calling for the cap to be completely "healthy" as you say. I just don't want to be sitting at 32nd every year with more than double the amount to shed than the 31st team. If we were cruising around the bottom 10 all the time, fine. But we are 32nd by a large margin every single year.

And I hear you on the football judgement thing. But DA was stuck with Paytons players and the next coach will be stuck with DA's players. That's not the way to run a team.

 

[BBarnes]

Thank you Ruben Foster for hanging up on the Saints

HAHAH he was so proud and thought it was so funny that he hung up on the Saints. Then went on to play in 16 games in his career and was waived for domestic violence.

 

[St. Geezy]

I have to blame the accounting people. I had no problem with Carr's contract as it was written when he signed it. It was 4 years $150mil with $60 mil fully guaranteed at signing. But they knew they were going to have to restructure and guarantee him more money the following year. The accountants added the guaranteed $ in void years, not the football people. If we couldn't afford him without doing that, we shouldn't have done it and that falls at the feet of the GM.

And to be clear, I'm not calling for the cap to be completely "healthy" as you say. I just don't want to be sitting at 32nd every year with more than double the amount to shed than the 31st team. If we were cruising around the bottom 10 all the time, fine. But we are 32nd by a large margin every single year.

And I hear you on the football judgement thing. But DA was stuck with Paytons players and the next coach will be stuck with DA's players. That's not the way to run a team.

That’s cosmetic info that is very limited by future data neither you nor those sources have, such as today’s news.

The Saints don’t care what OTC or Sportrac have as our cap number.

 

[Lustmord]

absolutely dominant RT his first few years. I recall one season he shut out JJ watt from the stat sheet as well as some other premier guys several weeks in a row

 

[Elvis]

That’s cosmetic info that is very limited by future data neither you nor those sources have, such as today’s news.

The Saints don’t care what OTC or Sportrac have as our cap number.

It's not just cosmetic and it's not just data. It's structural and impacts what we see on the field. Today's news isn't news. Everyone knew that was going to happen last year when it was clear Ram wasn't playing again. The accountants just had to wait a year because of the mess they made.

 

[St. Widge]

I think I am less of a “defender” of it in a vacuum and more of a guy that sees it as merely a different, more eye-catching version of the same problems everyone faces.

The problem with our system is that if you are up against the cap and go to bat and miss on a player, you have to live with a player you don’t want for an extra year or two. You have “borrowed from the future,” to help your present, and eventually that time and space has to be accounted for, whether it’s dead money or holding onto a player you would have never gotten in the first place for an extra year.

The problem with a “healthy cap” team that is up against the cap is they never sign that player in the first place. Or if they do have the space to sign them and they miss, they have a huge cap hit but aren’t willing to make moves to mitigate it because they have to keep their cap “healthy.”

I see your side’s argument for sure, don’t get me wrong, but I think ultimately there are consequences anytime you sign players to significant deals that you end up regretting, then compound it by not drafting well, staying healthy, and having competent coaching.

I am not trying to sell this as some huge advantage but more so as something that offers us a little more flexibility to make moves we deem necessary within the confines of the five year outlook prism rather than on being anal about keeping the books clean.

It’s easy for us to point to the Carr contract as something to hate, but the bottom line is the accounting system is what allowed us to sign a guy to a contract like that in the first place. It’s too bad it didn’t work out the way we hoped though, so now we pay the piper by (likely) keeping him around a year longer with an inflated number.

We agree more than you think, but I am more so in the “Blame the football people, not the accounting people that were told by the football people what they needed done” mindset.

I do see your pivot flexibility point 100%, but the pivoting will be pointless if you’re still making the same bad football judgment decisions.

I see the cap as more of a pesky accounting project to make your football decisions you’ve made work rather than an actual hinderance.

I do believe that our current roster problems are due to both being up against the cap with little flexabilty AND not doing a good enough job in the draft while taking too few picks. You can probably get away one or the other, but not both for any length of time.

But, I do think that as far as the cap they do need to learn to not sign aging vets, no matter how good, to long deals with void years added to fit under the cap. It has largely been necessitated by bad drafting, but both need to stop. For instance, they probably don't do the kinds of deals they did with Cam, Demario, Tyrann, or even AK if they had managed to draft players at those positions that were as good or better. Although some of it is the bad evaluation I mentioned above with Hedrickson, Baun, and maybe Ellis.

The one position it might make sense to do all the void years is a franchise QB, but Carr was never that, and you do that for Drew Brees, not ever other guy that was part of that run.

 

[ELLIASJWILLIAMS]

I have to blame the accounting people. I had no problem with Carr's contract as it was written when he signed it. It was 4 years $150mil with $60 mil fully guaranteed at signing. But they knew they were going to have to restructure and guarantee him more money the following year. The accountants added the guaranteed $ in void years, not the football people. If we couldn't afford him without doing that, we shouldn't have done it and that falls at the feet of the GM.

And to be clear, I'm not calling for the cap to be completely "healthy" as you say. I just don't want to be sitting at 32nd every year with more than double the amount to shed than the 31st team. If we were cruising around the bottom 10 all the time, fine. But we are 32nd by a large margin every single year.

And I hear you on the football judgement thing. But DA was stuck with Paytons players and the next coach will be stuck with DA's players. That's not the way to run a team.

I don't find so much fault in them because it boils down to a missed evaluation on Carr.

For instance, lets say their assessment of Carr is right. Lets say he ends up navigaing Carmichael/Paytons system w/ Gusto. 4000 yards and 30 TD's in year one and we make the playoffs. That restructure that they know is going to take place in a year does, but nobody cares because we're winning. They got it wrong on Carr and getting it wrong shines a very bright flashlight.

 

[HouseCall]

People take their anger out on the cap but the truth is that its been unforeseen injuries and player dropoffs that has did us in. Injuries will derail any team's plan every year no matter how green a cap looks.

Ramczyk great example.
Cam Jordan fell off the cliff at extension.
Mathieu to a bit of lesser extent.
Interior OL has had injury after injury over the past 3-4 years.

But that’s on the GM to see beyond the present season and also plan for contingencies - which is really hard to do when you are extending people over the age of 32 and tying up huge chunks of future cap on players who will, no doubt, provide diminished returns.

I disagree with this to a degree. They needed to stop doing it a few years ago and they definitely need to stop signing older players to contracts with a bunch of void years that accelerate into the cap making it impossible to move on, but it's a method that worked really well for 10 or so years keeping together a roster that was competing for championships.

But if you judge it fairly, how many of the past 10 seasons were the Saints legitimately contenders?

2014, 2015 and 2016 we went 7-9 and squandered prime Drew.

2017 we were good but really viewed as more of potential spoilers.

2018, 19 and 20, we were top-level in Drew’s final seasons bolstered heavily by the monster 2017 draft.

2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 we have been a team on gradual to now steady decline and failed to qualify for the postseason in a terrible division.

Even if you want to view the prime Payton/Drew years -

2009 - 2011 is about the best we’ve seen in terms of team depth and quality.

But the team had just as many average seasons 07’, 08’ 12’, 14, 15’, 16’ as it did playoff seasons.

So what was the big benefit of Loomis’ cap management system overall?

 

[ELLIASJWILLIAMS]

I don't find so much fault in them because it boils down to a missed evaluation on Carr.

For instance, lets say their assessment of Carr is right. Lets say he ends up navigaing Carmichael/Paytons system w/ Gusto. 4000 yards and 30 TD's in year one and we make the playoffs. That restructure that they know is going to take place in a year does, but nobody cares because we're winning. They got it wrong on Carr and getting it wrong shines a very bright flashlight.

If anything, getting it wrong on Carr and DA was a bright spot. If we'd have won with Carr his 1st year here, DA probably gets more security, and we probably keep thinking we have some type of Window open. We probably handle FA and the draft in a similar way to the past, trading up to get must have players that can help on a SB run.

Instead were here doing what should have been done after the 2021 season.

 

[SaintStephen1]

Mathieu a bad contract day 1. He was over the hill the minute he signed here.

 

[St. Widge]

I don't find so much fault in them because it boils down to a missed evaluation on Carr.

For instance, lets say their assessment of Carr is right. Lets say he ends up navigaing Carmichael/Paytons system w/ Gusto. 4000 yards and 30 TD's in year one and we make the playoffs. That restructure that they know is going to take place in a year does, but nobody cares because we're winning. They got it wrong on Carr and getting it wrong shines a very bright flashlight.

And I think the Carr deal too goes back to failures in the draft. They had chances to draft QBs like Jackson, Love, Hurts, and even Mahomes if Payton had kept his mouth shut but either they made bad evaluations or chose to take other positions because they were thinking too short term in the draft.

You make mistakes like Carr when you don't have a good young player on your roster to step up when an aging vet retires or gets too old to live up to his contract. And you end up having to game the cap to sign that guy because you don't have any other options. That's true at every position including QB. It's also the reason we signed Chase Young to a deal with 4 void years. We had nothing at DE other than a solid Granderson due to Cam's age and missing on Foskey, Davenport, and Turner. So, we had to spend future money and add void years in order to sign Young to a contract.

 

[ELLIASJWILLIAMS]

And I think the Carr deal too goes back to failures in the draft. They had chances to draft QBs like Jackson, Love, Hurts, and even Mahomes if Payton had kept his mouth shut but either they made bad evaluations or chose to take other positions because they were thinking too short term in the draft.

You make mistakes like Carr when you don't have a good young player on your roster to step up when an aging vet retires or gets too old to live up to his contract. That's true at every position including QB.

That is a fair assessment, alot of that is on DA. Loomis tends to be a hands-off GM, people who keep saying things like "Loomis isn't good in FB operations he needs a coach like Payton who can identify talent" forget that Loomis had to hire Ireland because something about evaluations had gone amiss under Payton's thumb.

There's no excuse for letting someone like Baun walk. You evaluated him properly, waited in the draft to get him, and then the HC sours on him and demotes him to Sam LB. Meanwhile the guy he likes, Werner, who seems to have impressed him, gets a 2nd contract for what many here would describe as solid play. A lot of those misses are on Allen because plenty of times he said the final decision always was w/ him.

Conversely Mac McDonald recently said "id like Geno back, but the final decision isn't a my decision its an us/organizational decision" Loomis doesn't run things like that. DA brought in his kind of guys, kept his guys, and the players that weren't...they left over the years and we're seeing it now.

 

[Elvis]

I don't find so much fault in them because it boils down to a missed evaluation on Carr.

For instance, lets say their assessment of Carr is right. Lets say he ends up navigaing Carmichael/Paytons system w/ Gusto. 4000 yards and 30 TD's in year one and we make the playoffs. That restructure that they know is going to take place in a year does, but nobody cares because we're winning. They got it wrong on Carr and getting it wrong shines a very bright flashlight.

I hear you, but Loomis is responsible for both the money and the talent. It comes with the job of GM. He's the final word. If he shifts the talent evaluatiosn to a coach, that's still on him. Carr had no history of ever being a franchise QB and they paid him like one when the only other team being tied to him was the Jets using him as leverage to get a deal done for Rodgers. He could have said no because there was too much risk to that signing but he gave DA what he wanted. And we can't keep using the same hypothetical situations where everything works out to excuse bad drafting, bad free agent signings and bad cap management. Only one of those things can be 100% without the potential for failure and that's the cap management.

 

[ELLIASJWILLIAMS]

I hear you, but Loomis is responsible for both the money and the talent. It comes with the job of GM. He's the final word. If he shifts the talent evaluatiosn to a coach, that's still on him. Carr had no history of ever being a franchise QB and they paid him like one when the only other team being tied to him was the Jets using him as leverage to get a deal done for Rodgers. He could have said no because there was too much risk to that signing but he gave DA what he wanted. And we can't keep using the same hypothetical situations where everything works out to excuse bad drafting, bad free agent signings and bad cap management. Only one of those things can be 100% without the potential for failure and that's the cap management.

Aha, but Loomis isn't the final word. He wasn't when Payton was HC, he wasn't when DA was HC. That's not his style, he isn't a meddlesome GM, he's always allowed his coaches to have final word, while he supports them.

 

[Elvis]

Aha, but Loomis isn't the final word. He wasn't when Payton was HC, he wasn't when DA was HC. That's not his style, he isn't a meddlesome GM.

Just because he abdicated the final word and gave it away to the HC doesn't mean it wasn't his. That's just making excuses for the guy at the expense of guys who aren't hear anymore.