salary cap hell! (1 Viewer)

[NeverGiveUP2]

saints need to get out of this salary cap situation. projected @ -83 million for 2024. time to trade down and gather as many picks as possible. yeah you might not get all the best picks in the draft,but you could get a lot of good players that could help this team and lower your cap hinderance. it's the only way that this team gets better. 7-9 and 9 -8 teams speak volumes about it's mediocrity. would be nice to see this team with cap space above a negative number. i think the winnow model has not worked. time to try a new strategy. get younger, get faster, and get smarter.

You are adorable... Welcome to Saints Fandom

 

[504gks]

Cap hell is very real but the facepalmers still don’t get it after all these years.

Cap is a big reason why we have terrible OL & DL. We were not able to fix awful drafts on both lines because we had no space. We signed two replacement level interior DLs, a bunch of no name OLs, and that’s it. Too bad, we needed pass rush and at least one more decent OL.

Next year we have 100 millions allocated to just 5 players (the top paid ones besides DK) who do not deserve that kind of money anymore: Ram 27, Cam 23, Kamara 18, DD 18, Taysom 15.
How do you fix that? Restructure. Restructuring means basically leaving things as they are, rather than falling into debt. In other words, every year we have to pay players way more than their actual value, much more than a team with a healthy cap that can cut players pretty anytime and avoid restructurings.
That’s how you lose games.

Drafts circa 2015-2020 kept us alive with a steady influx of cheap young players, allowing good FA signings, but it’s plain to see that it’s no longer the case. We have 4-5 good young defenders, 2-3 good young receivers, and that’s it. The rest, we overpay or get mediocre contribution.

mostly just 2017, our drafts kinda suk

 

[EvilMike]

Down the Line Loomis has us in the hole again, and repeat every year.

 

[dtc]

Settle down. I think you like to throw "straw man" out there because you think it makes you look smart. It doesn't. And we are not saying the same thing at all. The draft and cap management are unrelated. There is no cap strategy that will allow your team to be good if you draft poorly. There is also no draft success that excuses giving declining or injured players MORE guaranteed money to dig out your own past financial mistakes.

What drafting poorly does is make your team bad because you cannot restock the shelves with young players on cheap contract. What managing the cap poorly does is it makes your team bad because it limits your ability to do anything about it regardless of how you draft and leaves you with expensive declining players.


Sure, there is an occasional contract that teams regret, but they don't have rosters full of them? Ours didn't all start out as big money contracts. They started out as reasonable contracts that got restructured into bad contracts full of back loaded guaranteed money. Most teams give guys at Cam Jordans age and position 1 year deals for reasonable money. They aren't getting $13 million in guaranteed money with a $23 million cap hit from past restructures.

most teams haven't won more games in the past 17 years than all but 2. THe Saints have.

 

[kcirdor]

most teams haven't won more games in the past 17 years than all but 2. THe Saints have.

we haven't used this strategy for 17 years. We started doing this a couple years before Brees retired and was sold to us as going all in for Brees. All in for Brees has us at 500 post Brees. Plenty of teams have more wins than us the past 3 seasons.

 

[dtc]

we haven't used this strategy for 17 years. We started doing this a couple years before Brees retired and was sold to us as going all in for Brees. All in for Brees has us at 500 post Brees. Plenty of teams have more wins than us the past 3 seasons.

the strategy was sound and worked. We got very close and the price of losing an all world / all time qb isn't one that can be paid by simply being mad and complaining about it after the fact.

It also kept us at average instead of trash and has NEVER prevented us from signing anyone and everyone we wanted.

It's hard to win in the NFL. It's almost impossible to seamlessly replace Drew Brees or everyone would do it.

 

[Ghost]

As an outsiders view looking in?

The Saints are doing what the Pats did (and I'm no fan of the Pats mind you) at the end of Brady's run. They had pushed a fair amount off to try and "win just one more."

The Saints are doing that as well, but Brees is gone and refusing to rip the band aide off.

Sure, you can continue kicking the can down the road but as a few posters have correctly noted this is simply limiting options every season. Sure the Saints can get under the cap each year but there is a cost to that.

Add to this Carr was essentially at a discount this year and increases for mid level play at best?

At some point the bill comes due. While I can somewhat agree with the idea that its really a series of 5-year caps league wide, the Saints method of dealing with it is strange to say the least. it would make sense if Brees were still playing, but now? Not really.

IMO opinion the folks saying that (paraphrasing) while its not fully crippling, the Saints starting every season "in the red" narrows down options each year.

 

[Elvis]

the strategy was sound and worked. We got very close and the price of losing an all world / all time qb isn't one that can be paid by simply being mad and complaining about it after the fact.

It also kept us at average instead of trash and has NEVER prevented us from signing anyone and everyone we wanted.

It's hard to win in the NFL. It's almost impossible to seamlessly replace Drew Brees or everyone would do it.

Hardly anyone was complaining about going all in while Drew was playing. I don't think anyone was expecting a seamless transition either. It's been time to be trash for a year so we can get younger and cheaper. The Bucs attempted to do that this past year with $70 million in dead money and they ended up winning the division and a playoff game anyway. They are already past the bulk of their Brady era cap problems. Average is all we're ever going to be with this kick the can strategy. It didn't work when we had Drew and Payton and it's certainly not worth continuing now that they are both gone.

 

[St. Geezy]

It didn't work when we had Drew and Payton and it's certainly not worth continuing now that they are both gone.

How could you say it didn’t work when we had Sean and Drew? We were literally the league’s winningest team for like a five year stretch and if not for a couple of miracles, had likely won a ring or two.

I think people are too “SB or bust” when it comes to measuring team success. It is EXTREMELY hard to win a championship, because it requires being very good and very lucky. Sure, it is the ultimate goal, but only one team each year gets to enjoy those spoils.

Yes, we went all in to try to win a championship and we didn’t do it, however we definitely dominated the league during that stretch and that counts for something when measuring the success of a fiscal strategy.

Were we really not a success in your eyes in 2018 because an official decided not to throw a flag on the most blatant PI ever? Are we really not a success in 2017 because of the most bizarre miracle TD reception to win a playoff game? Is the ‘09 team more of a success simply because they got a lucky few fumble bounces and won an OT coin toss in a playoff game?

All of those teams were great, one just got very lucky, something many people hate to acknowledge.

 

[St. Geezy]

the strategy was sound and worked. We got very close and the price of losing an all world / all time qb isn't one that can be paid by simply being mad and complaining about it after the fact.

It also kept us at average instead of trash and has NEVER prevented us from signing anyone and everyone we wanted.

It's hard to win in the NFL. It's almost impossible to seamlessly replace Drew Brees or everyone would do it.

This is what people don’t understand or appreciate. Everyone these days measures success with a SB or bust mindset. To them, if you’re not absolutely dominating, you’re a failure.

Teams that are near .500 are basically the teams that didn’t have luck go their way. Teams that were a couple of lucky breaks like a controversial officiating call, or a ball bounce, or a FG miss from winning a division and being in the playoffs.

9-8 isn’t the end of the world. And don’t give me the crap about the schedule. Some of the Ls we took were to some really legitimate teams in hindsight.

If one freak thing like the examples above doesn’t happen, we are 10-7 division champs coming off a playoff season, and there are FAR fewer doom and gloom threads out there like this one.

 

[Ghost]

Sure but what is the goal now?

As I noted in 2023 Carr was at a discount , this year he costs substantially more. If understand it correctly, the restructuring juts spreads out the pain across more seasons.

Doing that for at best mid tier QB play isn’t likely going to help. What was he last year something like 5 million or so for the season? That’s (close) to a rookie contract or lower level QB money. Teams usually bank on this contracts to build the roster elsewhere.

Now you guys are facing a rising cost at QB. When added with the other contracts that are coming due?

Again you can push them out but that is delaying the inevitable. At some point the bill has to get paid.

 

[St. Geezy]

Sure but what is the goal now?

As I noted in 2023 Carr was at a discount , this year he costs substantially more. If understand it correctly, the restructuring juts spreads out the pain across more seasons.

Doing that for at best mid tier QB play isn’t likely going to help. What was he last year something like 5 million or so for the season? That’s (close) to a rookie contract or lower level QB money. Teams usually bank on this contracts to build the roster elsewhere.

Now you guys are facing a rising cost at QB. When added with the other contracts that are coming due?

Again you can push them out but that is delaying the inevitable. At some point the bill has to get paid.

This is hindsight analysis and once again, fails to acknowledge that if we had a normal, so-called “healthy” cap, then suddenly Carr’s first year is written more traditional cap-wise, with more bonus-type money built into the beginning, and we’d still be in the same boat of not being able to cut him this off-season.

I am so tired of hearing the phrase “at some point the bill has to be paid.” It’s a silly trope based on real world principles and, after over a decade of us never having a truly bad “cap hell” roster, at some point you’d think people would realize that it doesn’t apply the same to the NFL.

The more apt way to look at our situation is that we pay our bill every single year and our creditor keeps raising our credit limit significantly, in virtually guaranteed fashion except for the one year they got hit hard by the pandemic. We choose to take advantage of those guaranteed credit increases more than most teams, some out of necessity, and some out of want-to so that we can keep the “must keeps” who we want and so that we can go out and sign the “must acquires” who we want, including the highest paid free agent on the market a year ago.

Also keep in mind, the teams themselves have a lot more data than we do in regards to league revenues and cap projections. They’re working with actual, more accurate hard numbers, both in terms of cap projections as well as in terms of future restructure plans with each and every contract. The team isn’t taken by surprise when we start an off-season $80 million in a hole. The plan to remedy that has long been figured out and we are likely going into the off-season trying to figure out what we are going to do with the $30 million-plus in cap space we already know we’ll have.

Again, if we had a healthy cap, we’d be in the same boat with Carr’s contract, just with a different form of the same problem that every team faces.

Teams aren’t out here cutting bad contracts left and right. Many teams are stuck with contracts they don’t want, and that’s a part of what helps them keep the illusion of a healthy cap.

 

[St. Geezy]

Can anyone here give me an example of a so-called "cap healthy" team signing a highly paid free agent of any sort, much less THE highest paid free agent of a given off-season, and releasing them after one season?

 

[lilvipa221]

This is hindsight analysis and once again, fails to acknowledge that if we had a normal, so-called “healthy” cap, then suddenly Carr’s first year is written more traditional cap-wise, with more bonus-type money built into the beginning, and we’d still be in the same boat of not being able to cut him this off-season.

I am so tired of hearing the phrase “at some point the bill has to be paid.” It’s a silly trope based on real world principles and, after over a decade of us never having a truly bad “cap hell” roster, at some point you’d think people would realize that it doesn’t apply the same to the NFL.

The more apt way to look at our situation is that we pay our bill every single year and our creditor keeps raising our credit limit significantly, in virtually guaranteed fashion except for the one year they got hit hard by the pandemic. We choose to take advantage of those guaranteed credit increases more than most teams, some out of necessity, and some out of want-to so that we can keep the “must keeps” who we want and so that we can go out and sign the “must acquires” who we want, including the highest paid free agent on the market a year ago.

Also keep in mind, the teams themselves have a lot more data than we do in regards to league revenues and cap projections. They’re working with actual, more accurate hard numbers, both in terms of cap projections as well as in terms of future restructure plans with each and every contract. The team isn’t taken by surprise when we start an off-season $80 million in a hole. The plan to remedy that has long been figured out and we are likely going into the off-season trying to figure out what we are going to do with the $30 million-plus in cap space we already know we’ll have.

Again, if we had a healthy cap, we’d be in the same boat with Carr’s contract, just with a different form of the same problem that every team faces.

Teams aren’t out here cutting bad contracts left and right. Many teams are stuck with contracts they don’t want, and that’s a part of what helps them keep the illusion of a healthy cap.

So you think the Saints are on a path to become a contender? Or at the current state of the team can get back to super bowl contention within the next few years? Or do they need to get more healthy with the cap to fill some holes to get there?

Drafting is imperfect and with the current financial situation we have to be perfect with the draft to get back to prosperity. You need cap space and flexibility to plug holes that you do not in the draft and we have to dig at the bottom of the barrel for over the hill or close to it free agents to plug those holes.

 

[VinSaint]

It isn't about finding the most expensive FA in the market. It's about finding the best FA to address team needs, regardless of how much they cost.