Saints Worst Contract 2014

Worst Contract: Curtis Lofton
I could easily see giving the nod to either of the Guards, who have both gone through restructures and are near the top of the food chain, but both are higher quality players and have already made it through a majority of their contracts. While Curtis Lofton is not the highest paid player on the team his contract illustrates all of the problems that the New Orleans Saints seem to have when it comes to contracts with their player. While the $5.5 million a year is a reasonable enough figure for Lofton, the $12.8 million virtually guaranteed was on par with players who earned $2 million more a season than Lofton did.
Needing to keep his salary cap charge low in the first year of his contract, the team deferred $5 million, in the form of a roster bonus, to 2013, which would have led to a salary cap charge of $7.1 million. In fact the Saints littered the contract with offseason roster bonuses in 2014 and 2015 as well. These are dangerous because it gives the team almost no time to work on pay reductions for a player and instead forces them in to what can be hasty decisions. In 2013 the Saints converted his $5 million roster bonus to a prorated bonus and added a voidable contract year to further reduce Lofton’s cap charges.
His cap charge in 2015 now sits at $9 million with dead money having rising from just $2 million to $5. Lofton has a large roster bonus coming his way ($4.5 million) so the Saints will need to find a way to rework the contract. If he opts to try free agency rather than take a pay cut all his money will accelerate to the cap, and in the end could still just end up back in New Orleans if they really want him. If they did not use the roster bonus mechanism this would be a much easier task to accomplish.
The $5 million in dead money gives Lofton some decent leverage with the team. If you consider that $5 million sunk it means the Saints need to find a replacement that can come in under $4 million in cap charges for the year to keep the positional budgeting at $9 million. While there are ways to work the numbers to do that it is mostly a lower quality player that will be attracted to the position, unless the team is looking to add to an already bad future cap situation. They likely, at best, would make a lateral move on the position. Had there been no restructures they would have had $6 million or so to spend in cap dollars to break even. That is a different tier of player than where they will be looking now.
LINK

agree that his and the guard cap situation will be the coming focus