Explain it to me like I'm five. How/why did our cap situation get so bad?

This must be your 1st visit to this site.

Ram is basically retired, the only reason he is still on the roster at all is to lessen cap hit

The Saints wanted to keep expensive veteran player AND sign expensive free agents year after year. They didn't really have the "liquidity" to do it, but they made it work within the cap by continuing to backload the cap hit for lot of the expensive contracts. As guys would get older their cap hits would become more onerous...for decreasing production. That put the Saints in a spots where it is cost prohibitive to cut the older players whose production has decreased.

In other words, they remained in "win now", worry about how to pay for it later, mode. They really couldn't afford the expensive toys, but they bought them on credit with favorable initial interest rates that they kept refinancing. Now the toys are breaking down and they still have to pay a big bill for them...leaving them with little money to afford new, better, toys.

Mickey "Smackin Gum" Loomis

They would push money down the road during the last few years of Brees to keep talent for SB run. Was great idea then as these were mid career guys and you had Brees. As soon as he retired you should have unloaded much of those players but instead you doubled down and keep pushing money down the road but not for mid career guys now old veterans. So with old veterans there isn’t much room for kicking the can. Then while handling the old veterans double down even more paying Derek Carr whom no one wanted to a $150M contract. Buccs were in our position but signed baker to $5m contact and ate dead cap. Saints did not. On top of that sign a 60 year old can Jordan to over $20m a year. It all comes to a head when 4 years ago action should have been taken. If you did take that action, very possible you have Trevor Lawrence , cj strout or one of the rookies from this year. If not that much better young talent


Get ready for every opening to be filled before the saints. Least desirable because of loomis

quote:

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Carr
Ram
Jordan
Hill
Matthieu
Williams

That would give us 11 million in cap space and 99 million in space next year.

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This is very misleading. The Saints are 66M over the cap, 11M in space does not help. There have to be extensions/restructures (and hopefully friendly retirements in Ram or maybe Cam) to get cap compliant. We can't just "cut a ton of players" and suffer. We literally could cut the entire roster and would not be under the cap for the 2025 League Year.

To answer OP's question honestly and not just being a hater, the team used this strategy that pushed cap pain into the future because the cap is always going up, so a dollar today is worth much more than a dollar in 2-3 years when the cap is higher. It's basic math, and honestly, if you're winning, it's not a bad strategy IMO.

The problem is, when the team is bad like we are now, it feels like you're stuck because of what I described above...we're so tight to the cap that we can't just fully blow it up. It's a trade off - you can be more competitive for longer with this strategy, but your rebuilds will be harsher. This is likely why the team has resisted rebuilding so hard (and will likely continue to do so).

quote:

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We should cut:

Carr
Ram
Jordan
Hill
Matthieu
Williams

That would give us 11 million in cap space and 99 million in space next year.

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You are missing a huge piece of this, which would keep this plan from working. In order for cutting all of these players to get $11M under the cap, they would all need to be post-6/01 cuts. The team has to be cap compliant by 3/12/25 or the league steps in to manipulate contracts, then penalizes the team. Will be a significant penalty as the team would then be a repeat offender (due to shenanigans that 1 year where the CBA was delayed).

Cutting those players now only saves $4.3M, which means the team is now $62.5M over the cap and has $178M in dead money - 2025 cap projected to be $275M

You can designate only 2 of those players as post 6/01 cap cuts, but even doing that the entire amount of dead money hits the books on 3/12 and does not come off until 6/01. So they would not have the wiggle room to get under the cap due to the amount of dead money.

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Arrogance at GM level coupled with incompetence at ownership level.

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Arrogance & incompetence at GM level

FIFY

Wow

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If it's about management clinging to a "win now" mindset in spite of a decaying roster, then why have they done nothing but get worse?

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You make choices, that was one. Sometimes you make the choice before you have a clear picture because the situation doesn't clarify until you are a little down the road. I think they dropped that idea either sometime last season or this season. So I expect things to improve now.

I know everyone hates Loomis now but he is a money guy above all else, He will again kick the can partially down the road but now to lessen the cap hit in the next 2 years rather than get high-end veteran pieces. As a few guys have said, 2027 is the year to circle.

If that turns out not to be the case, the Saints are screwed until Mickey is gone.