This is interesting. ESPN’s Katherine Terrell reports that the New Orleans Saints restructured Taysom Hill’s contract, opening up a lot of salary cap space; after drifting near $5 million in cap clearance by signing their rookie draft class and a couple of veteran free agents, they’re now in the clear by $12 million.
The Saints did this, per Terrell, by converting $8.79 million of Hill’s base salary into a signing bonus that will be paid out over subsequent years for accounting purposes. Hill went from owning the second-highest salary cap hit on the team ($15.7 million) to sixth-highest ($9.1 million). The team went from ranking 32nd in cap space to 22nd, so this may have just been about creating more breathing-room.
But what if there’s another shoe about to drop? Recommitting to Hill and making it tougher to trade or release him in the future wasn’t done for nothing. Maybe the Saints are working on a trade or big (relative to June) free agent signing. More likely is that they’re working on extensions with some players in the building. Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed are ineligible to sign new deals until March 2025, but guys like Paulson Adebo, Pete Werner, and Alvin Kamara might make sense if they’re part of the long-term vision for the team. Stay tuned.
