Few teams have created as big a mess of the salary cap for themselves as the New Orleans Saints. General manager Mickey Loomis spearheaded a push to build around veteran quarterback Derek Carr and former head coach Dennis Allen a couple of offseasons ago that resulted in Carr signing a four-year, $150 million deal — big money for a quarterback who had never won a playoff game.
And now the Saints are really paying for it. Carr has gone 14-13 as a starter through two years while missing a lot of time with injuries. He’s been seen barking at his coaches and younger teammates during games while averaging just 223.1 passing yards per game since he arrived in New Orleans, 3rd-lowest among 19 different quarterbacks with at least 800 pass attempts in that span (Carr has 827).
Now his salary cap hit is cruising past $51.4 million in 2025. $30 million of that is tied up in Carr’s salary, but he’s made it clear he won’t give it up.
“I wouldn’t take a pay cut,” Carr told ESPN’s Katherine Terrell. “Yeah, I wouldn’t do that. Especially with what I put on tape. Would I restructure? Absolutely. I’ll always help the team that way. But there’s some things that you put out there that you earned. Even in some cases it could be even worse, but I felt confident when I signed it that this would give the team the best flexibility at the time.”
Carr’s agent Timothy Younger took Loomis to the cleaners on that contract — he made sure to negotiate a no-trade clause just like Carr got from the Las Vegas Raiders, which makes it more difficult for New Orleans to get out of it. While the Saints have only paid $19.8 million against the salary cap over the last two years due to some crafty accounting, the team is on the hook for cap hits of $51.4 million in 2025 and $61.4 million in 2026, before his deal expires in 2027, leaving behind at least $17.2 million of dead money.
And another restructure like Carr alluded to wouldn’t help the team in a meaningful sense. That’s just kicking the can down the road even further. Carr’s cap hit would drop to as low as $20.4 million for 2025, but the $30.9 million difference would be paid out over 2026 and 2027. He gets his money now rather than later, and while it would help the Saints reach cap compliance in 2025 they’d still have to work around it in the next year or two. It’s disingenuous for him or any other player in his position to suggest otherwise.
So the Saints are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Carr will very likely be their quarterback again in 2025, but if he doesn’t pick up his play and lead them to success in the fall, it’ll be even more urgent to search for an exit ramp. Unfortunately, the way Loomis structured this contract and the decision to restructure it once already really limits their options, and doing so again this offseason would almost insure Carr sees it through all four years with a heavy lump of dead money left behind once he’s off the team in 2027.
