Loomis Has A Salary Cap 'Plan,' 20-item Checklist For Offseason

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The New Orleans Saints have a plan to get under the NFL salary cap by March 10 and an offseason checklist to improve on last year's 7-9 season, general manager Mickey Loomis told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in an interview at the NFL Combine.

"I wouldn't call it easy, yet we know what our plan is," Loomis said. "And we've known what it's going to be for some quite time -- in terms of just getting under the cap."

The Saints are well above the projected 2015 salary cap, although the team has as handful of bonus conversions that can quickly slice millions off their cap number.

In some ways, the Saints task is more straightforward than it was a year ago, when Jimmy Graham's status dominated the offseason, or 2012, when Drew Brees was negotiating a new deal.

The only significant decision left on the 2014 roster is Mark Ingram, who the Saints have only three weeks to sign before he becomes an unrestricted free agent.

"We're going to have a list of 20 things, give or take a few, that we want to get accomplished in this offseason," Loomis said. "Fifteen or 16 of them are before the draft and then there's four or five things we'd like to get accomplished in the course of the draft. I don't think that's different."

Loomis said he would view the team critically without overreacting to last year's finish.

"Every year we've got to look at our team with a critical eye and try not to be swayed by the emotional investment we have in any given team," he said. "That's true whether you're 11-5 or 7-9. Obviously we've got a different feeling after 7-9 and not living up to expectations that I think we all had coming into last season.

"But we have to be careful about not letting those those highs and lows -- and obviously last season was a bit of a low -- interfere with what our mind tells us we need to do."

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