It’s a day that ends with “Y” so somewhere a nerd is complaining about the New Orleans Saints’ salary cap management. On Tuesday that guy was ESPN Analytics’ Seth Walder, who handed out offseason grades for all 32 teams.
And Walder graded the Saints harshly, tying them for the worst grade of the bunch; like the Las Vegas Raiders, they received a D. Here’s why he argues the Saints are “addicted to mediocrity:”
Their salary cap situation is bad. According to Roster Management, the Saints have $15 million in cap space despite quarterback Derek Carr, cornerback Marshon Lattimore, defensive end Cameron Jordan, quarterback/tight end Taysom Hill, offensive tackle Ryan Ramczyk, linebacker Demario Davis, center Erik McCoy, safety Tyrann Mathieu and defensive Carl Granderson all having a base salary under $1.5 million to keep their 2024 cap hits low. Which is exactly why the team is $77.6 million over the salary cap in 2025 currently — over $50 million more than any other team. A team could (maybe) justify this process if it was in a championship window, but that is not the Saints!
The team ought to be shedding as much salary as it can and converting the low-salary players into draft capital via trades to jump-start a full rebuild. Instead, the Saints are running it back with a 9-8 team led by Carr. The team’s big move in free agency was signing Young to a one-year, fully guaranteed $13 million deal, a move I like. Young had an above-average 19% pass rush win rate at edge rusher in 2023 and could be a productive player for New Orleans in 2024, then potentially land the team a compensatory pick for signing elsewhere in free agency next year.
In a vacuum, trading underperforming veterans to save salary cap space and load up on draft picks makes sense for an uncompetitive team. But here’s the problem that Walder overlooked: the Saints would have been trading players at a loss. It would’ve cost them more money to trade all those veteran contracts he’s complaining about than to just keep the players.
At most, they could have saved $4.9 million by trading Davis, the heartbeat of their defense. Trading Carr would have yielded $12.9 million but he had a no-trade clause written into his contract, so that wasn’t happening, either. Carl Granderson being traded would have saved $3.5 million against the cap but he’s exactly the sort of young, productive playmaker who should be part of the long-term plan. Trading other players like Lattimore, Hill, and Cesar Ruiz at the start of the offseason — when the Saints needed to get under the cap! — would have either broken even, barely, or cost them even more money than they were already paying.
The Saints would have saved less than $2 million or paid more in dead money at the start of the offseason to offload each of those other contracts Walder highlighted. When you’re starting the offseason in the red by almost $80 million you can’t afford to sit on big cap hits and trade them after June 2 to maximize savings. New Orleans needed immediate solutions, and because they already guaranteed much of the money going to those veterans this year it meant their best option was to restructure those contracts and pay it out over time. The money was going to be spent on them either way.
And because the Saints loaded up those guarantees for guys like Cameron Jordan and Tyrann Mathieu and Erik McCoy and Derek Carr, their only real option was to restructure contracts. In the past they’ve justified that approach (as Walder is trying to do here) by arguing it’s intended to max out their salary cap resources and build a competitive team. The reality they’re in is that these restructures are a tactic for survival. Trading or cutting all those veterans wouldn’t help the cap situation. Restructuring was their only way out.
Maybe the Saints should have cleaned house. Dennis Allen’s vision for the team has led them nowhere through two years. They haven’t gotten a strong enough return on contracts with high-priced veterans like Jordan and Carr. There are plenty of valid complaints to share about this Saints team, but their salary cap management is what it is. At this point they’ve made their bed and now they have to lie in it until the ever-rising salary cap catches up with their spending. Hopefully the coaching and on-field performance improves to make this narrative less popular, but until that happens it’ll continue to be drawn out.
