It’s that time of year again when the Saints begin to fall out of contention and people start asking me about their salary cap situation for the following year. This year it all feels a bit bleaker than usual because the Saints have one of the worst records in the NFL and just fired their head coach, but the mechanics of dealing with the team’s salary cap woes are generally the same as usual.
Every season many Saints fans get upset with me for pointing out the issues with the Saints salary cap. The point of the discussions every year, however, is not about the Saints not being able to get under the salary cap, but it is about what damage they are doing to their future roster by compromising the flexibility they have with their players in large part due to the salary cap consequences of releasing those players.
The Saints issues with the salary cap have gone on for more than a decade, but they have two distinct phases to look at. In the mid 2010’s the Saints got caught up in some bad contract decisions both in free agency and regarding extensions given to player’s on their own roster. The Saints led the NFL in dead money in both 2015 and 2016 and ranked 6th in 2017. Over that three year stretch the Saints had about $20 million more than the next closest team in the NFL and were $58M worse than the NFL average. This was during the period of time when the Saints went 7-9 every year from 2014 to 2016 despite having one of the top QBs in the NFL in his prime during that period.
The Saints were able to get out of that mess through exceptional drafting which saw them bounce back in 2017 to an 11-5 record and then they were a legit Super Bowl contender for the next three years due to the strength of their draft classes. During that period the Saints moved away from some of the things that got them in trouble in that 2014 to 2016 era. Gone, for the most part, were the overpriced contracts and instead the team focused on more calculated decisions with their roster and negotiating contracts that I would consider as fair or team friendly.
But while the team was no longer ranking at the top of the NFL in dead money due to cuts they began the process of overly relying on contract restructures to keep their roster intact and continue chasing that Super Bowl ring. A contract restructure is when a team converts a players salary into a bonus that splits over five years. The benefit of the restructure is that it lowers a player’s salary cap charge in the current year, however it increases the players salary cap charge in every remaining year as well as the salary cap cost for releasing a player.
How excessive is the Saints use of restructures? From 2020 to 2024 they have ranked no lower than 2nd in a given year in the amount of salary converted to a bonus for salary cap purposes. Over the entire term no team is even in the same ballpark as New Orleans. The Saints have restructured around $450 million to create nearly $340 million in cap space over that timeframe. The amount converted is a staggering $254 million more than the next closest team. They have “created” $182 million more in cap room than the next closest team. In recent years they have had to restructure almost every eligible contract to function. They are up to nearly 50 restructures, almost 25 more than the next closest team and that does not even count a few players who were extended in large part to lower their cap hits.
This phase of the Saints salary cap decision making is different than the first one. They have not really cut players, but have kept kicking the can with the same players, adding some new ones, and then watching some dead money hit the books when contracts expire and restructure money placed in void years hits the books. Unfortunately for New Orleans there has been no exceptional draft class to fix the problems and things are about to go from bad to worse.
This year’s situation is worse than the past because there is no masking how bad the team is. For the last few years the team had been right around 0.500 and when the team becomes cap compliant and adds a free agent fans scream that “the cap is fake”. But while the cap is indeed fake in a given year the accumulation of cap charges gives a team few options with the roster.
The Saints sit about $63 million over our estimated salary cap next year. Their position is $55 million worse than the next closest NFL team. They already lead the NFL in dead money with $48 million on the books following their decision to trade Marshon Lattimore, just months after they opted into a contract restructure they needed to function for 2024.
There are no savings to be found by releasing players. The only player whose release saves significant money is Ryan Ramczyk whose release saves $6 million. There are five other players who will save between $2 and 4 million if cut. You can reduce the net savings by $840,000 which is the minimum salary earned by a rookie who would replace the cut player. So basically, the Saints get stuck having to restructure the same bad roster because past decisions have really eliminated the exit ramp that almost every other bad team has with their roster.
I would anticipate the Saints getting creative with their roster decisions. Up first is what to do with Derek Carr. The Saints signed Carr to a $37.5 million per year contract in 2023 and his cap number next year is $51.5 million. The problem is the cost to cut him is $50 million so there is nothing saved by cutting him outright. The Saints also owe him $10 million in guaranteed salary. I can not see the benefit of doubling down on Carr next year. It hasn’t worked at all and he likely will be out of the NFL if released. They could try to bring his salary way down to something like $20 million, freeing up $20 million in the process and then however much more by converting that $20 million into a bonus, but what purpose is there for Carr to be a Saint in 2025?
The Saints should work with Carr on renegotiating his contract in 2024 so that they can designate him a post June 1 release in 2025. How does that work? The team would pay Carr his $10 million guarantee as a bonus in 2024, increasing his 2024 cap charge by $2 million (the team has just enough space to pull this off), and in return he would agree to reduce his salary from $30 million in 2025 to $1.255 million. This would drop Carr’s 2025 salary cap figure from $51.5 million to $14.7 million. Taking into account the loss of $2 million in 2024 carryover, the team’s net cap position would improve by about $34.8 million. Carr would then be designated a post June 1 cut and count for $13.5 million against the salary cap in 2025 once the release is processed. His dead money in 2026 would be $34.7 million.
In my mind this is the one move the Saints have to make. The near $35 million in cap savings will put them in a position to be salary cap compliant without having to double and triple down on everyone else on the roster. Keeping Carr to let him compete just makes the situation worse and the team needs to have someone else, preferably a draft pick, under center next year.
After the Carr deal is hopefully done the team needs to begin identifying players who will potentially retire. Ramczyk will be at the top of that list. The team will negotiate a new contract with him that takes his salary down to $1.255 million and reduces his cap charge by $16.745 million. This will let the Saints carry him on the roster until June 2nd at which point they will release him from his contract. By waiting until June the team will have a dead money charge of $11.1 million plus any injury benefit he is eligible for rather than the $23 million dead money charge that would come with a March release. They will be left with $12 million dead in 2025.
Cam Jordan has been an institution in New Orleans but a $20 million cap charge for a pass rusher in his mid 30s on a bad team isn’t really good for the Saints and could lead Jordan to consider retirement. He has a $1.5 million salary guarantee and the Saints should be willing top pay that out as a bonus if he retires (the Eagles used to essentially negotiate retirement bonuses into Jason Kelce’s contract and I would consider these similar situations). Doing this would allow the Saints to reduce his cap charge from $20 million to about $8.45 million and carry him until June 2nd. This would allow them to take on just $7.86 million in dead money in 2025 and defer about $15.2 million to 2026.
If the team can get the Carr deal done then they would be pretty close to being salary cap compliant following the two retirements. Hopefully they can then be more cautious with what they do, knowing that they will be working with a skeleton of a roster in 2025 and hoping that the draft class can lift them the way it had the Washington Commanders in 2024.
Here are some other moves to consider
Demario Davis exceeded every expectation the Saints should have had when they brought him to New Orleans in 2018. He has a $12.5 million cap figure and would cost $17 million to release. He has a more significant guarantee than Jordan- $4.25 million- and would probably be able to sign with a contender if he was cut. I think this is a spot where the Saints would be best served to give Davis to talk to other teams about signing and let him negotiate as if he were a free agent. Since his $4.25 million should be subject to offsets, let him agree to a deal elsewhere and then pay the difference to Davis and release him. That doesn’t save them cap room but would bring that dead money number down from $17 million to probably $14 million.
If the team does not need to restructure Tyrann Mathieu’s contract it would make sense to have him as the second post June 1 cut alongside Carr. They could see if they could so a similar contract modification as they did with Carr to get an early cap benefit, but carrying him at $11.3 million on the cap during free agency would not be the end of the world. His cap charge on June 2nd would reduce to $5.1 million, which would give the Saints the room they need to re-sign their rookies. They would defer $7.2 million in dead money to 2026 with the June 1 option. If for whatever reason the team want’s Mathieu back in 2025 then they should do a contract modification for Chase Young to potentially June 1 him instead.
From there the team should be able to only restructure as needed to make sure they can keep a roster together for the year. They can create cap room with restructures of Carl Granderson, Eric McCoy, and Cesar Ruiz but should only be pulling those levers if absolutely necessary, not just blindly doing it for everyone.
This approach should get the Saints in a position where they can begin to really trim the roster in 2026. While they would likely lead the NFL in dead money in 2026 it at least puts them in a position where the salary cap is no longer dictating moves and they can begin to cut players rather than being forced to keep them to remain cap compliant leaving them in a position to be active in free agency or with extensions in 2027.
The worst thing the Saints could do is maintain the same path. If the plan is to keep Carr on his current contract and restructure his deal again for cap room, they will extend their issues into 2027 rather than beginning to ease out of them next year. The trade of Lattimore makes me think they will not be keeping Carr, but it was only a week or two earlier that they extended Alvin Kamara in large part for cap purposes which made no sense for a rebuilding team. We should know the answer to how the Saints plan on approaching this by January 4th which is the deadline to modify the Carr contract for a June 1 release. If they fail to do that and run it back again in 2025 with this same group all they are doing is setting themselves up for five years of total failure.
For those who think there is a quick path out of their mess- their isn’t other than hitting a home run at QB in the draft. The above moves are, in my opinion, the best option to avoid having to do massive restructures across the entire roster and extending the pain even longer. At the moment a number of players will have their contracts expire in 2026 and the team should be able to handle the dead money from those contracts provided that they do the hard moves this year.
It won’t be easy for the team to completely change their approach for the next two seasons after years of following the same team building and cap management philosophies. Not only will they struggle through this season but will see their salary cap greatly impacted in 2025 and 2026 as they trot out what largely will look like an expansion roster combined with aging veterans before 2027 will allow them to completely wipe the slate clean. If they can hit in the draft it won’t matter as good young players mask these kind of problems, but everyone will need to be patient with the Saints as they try to climb out of this hole they created.