$62mm over the 2023 cap

They will make moves and probably restructure or extend to push money to 2025, where they have a ton of cap space. But I think they will have to try to offload some of it, they just can't afford to trade anyone who leaves behind a ton of cap burden going forward.

I think the idea has always been to kick the can down the road until it is small enough to tighten the belt for one season. If the Saints don't pursue any major free agents, it was looking like maybe 2025 was gonna be that year but who knows at this point.

This is how it was always going to work...

The team continuously kicked the can while trading in draft chips to find the "missing piece" while Payton's window with Brees was open

Sean saw what he had without Brees last year, knew the cap situation was only going to get worse, and jumped ship.

It was amazing timing because now we have people saying "Payton should come back and fix this" or "now we know how good Sean was". It was Sean who created this current situation that we're in

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restructure or extend to push money to 2025, where they have a ton of cap space

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Historically yes, the players were willing to restructure to maintain the winning program and to give them a shot at a ring. Plus I think they enjoyed playing for SP, the locker room was a good environment, and the community offered a great atmosphere . Let’s see how many are willing to do this for a flat team with a losing record.

Begin trading all tradable assets in exchange for draft picks. ALL tradable player personnel assets, even Mama's favorite player, whomever that might be.

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even Mama's favorite player, whomever that might be.

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<——Me

ETA: Oh, you meant that figuratively. My bad.

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Basically, with the way most of our contracts are structured, we can’t just cut players. We’ll basically recover no cap or even lose more with cuts. We’re going to have to kick the can more to actually be cap compliant. The front office is going to have to be really smart choosing who they do that with.

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This keeps getting repeated daily, but people just don't want to hear it. There is no quick fix, it will be a multi-year purge. There will be a lot of pissed off fans/threads when the team starts extending/restructuring contracts

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$31 million under for 2024 right now.

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Not sure where you're getting that number, most sites I have seen are expecting the 2024 cap to be under $230M and the active contracts are $223M. But, regardless of that, there are 2 major factors overlooked in optimism that the team is $31M under the 2024 cap.

Whether it's $50M or $60M over in 2023, the team will need to push a lot of this to future years to get under in 2023. Also, in 2023 there are only 33 players under contract. So, not only will they need to reduce the current cap by the $50-60M for current salaries they need to make room for another ~30 players (20 to active, ~10 to PS).

And, when looking at the 2024 cap, there are only 21 players under contracts. So, it will need to absorb some of that money pushed forward from 2023, the 2nd year of any multi-year contracts signed in 2023, and then fill the remaining roster to get to ~60 players.

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And in 2024 a lot of contracts become a lot more palatable to get rid of.

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This is true, but won't be as true once we get there. Some of the contracts that appear like palatable cuts in 2024 right now will get extended and restructured again to try to make us compliant for 2023, and they will lose some of their cut-feasibility. That's why I said earlier that it's very critical they choose moves for players that we definitely want to keep.