There’s been a lot of worrying about the New Orleans Saints’ salary cap situation — mostly from outside New Orleans. Pro Football Focus ranked the Saints dead-last in evaluating the “salary cap health” outlook for every team across the NFL, and the Saints’ unorthodox team-building strategies still draw the ire of experts like ESPN’s Bill Barnwell. But things look a lot better for New Orleans once you take a closer look at how they’ve set themselves up.
As expected, the Saints took advantage of the NFL’s post-June 1 rule and waited to process Malcolm Jenkins’ retirement until it was most beneficial for them. Despite having hung up his cleats and cut the team a break by reducing his salary to the league minimum, Jenkins will remain on the books for a meager $3.95 million (left over from his signing bonus) this year and next, just like Drew Brees did when he stepped away from the game. That adds up to a combined $33.3 million dead money charge for the Saints from past contracts with players like Brees, Jenkins, and Terron Armstead, but let’s keep some perspective.
On its face, that $33.3 million in dead money (let’s be precise — the team at Over The Cap has the Saints with a cumulative charge of $33,336,318) is daunting. It’s a total that ranks sixth-highest in the NFL. Compare it to the rest of the league, though, and you’ll see that’s it’s closer to the $25.7 million NFL-average than the $52.7 million average that the top-five teams (the Atlanta Falcons, Chicago Bears, Houston Texans, Philadelphia Eagles, and Seattle Seahawks) are accounting for. The gap between sixth-ranked New Orleans and fifth-worst Seattle ($12.6 million) is almost as wide as that between Seattle and second-place Chicago ($10.1 million).
