Saints: Who's on the hot seat?
 

We’ll continue our look at which NFC South players could be on the hot seat because of salary-cap casualties with the New Orleans Saints.

At the moment, the Saints are under the cap, but that’s only temporary. They’re trying to re-sign quarterback Drew Brees to a new contract and that alone could put them over the cap. In addition to Brees, they also have key players Marques Colston and Carl Nicks that they would like to prevent from departing in free agency. They also have some lesser potential free agents in receiver Robert Meachem and cornerback Tracy Porter that, in a perfect world, they would like to keep.

But this isn’t a perfect world and the Saints are probably going to have to make some painful cap moves.

Read more; Saints: Who's on the hot seat? - NFC South Blog - ESPN

Nice read, but not really anything we haven't talked about here.

Smith, Vilma, and Ellis restructured or released. Henderson a candidate for release. Bushrod's potential release was a little surprising. I can't support releasing him, but a trade could be an option.

Letting negotiations with Brees get to the point of tagging him is stupid and, in my opinion, irresponsible. Nicks should get the tag and we should give re-signing Colston a shot, but he still might get away.

Potential draft replacements for Colston:
Stephen Hill 6'4" 215lbs 4.36 40-time (probably won't be there for us in round 2, but definitely won't make it to round 3)
Tommy Streeter 6'5" 219lbs 4.40 40-time (potential target in round 3 with great size and speed)
Gerell Robinson 6'3" 227lbs 4.62 40-time (could be there in round 6 and is still a big target, but probably a more realistic option)

I don't want the Saints to release Vilma or Smith I hope there smart enough to restructure there contract for the good of the team. I would release Ellis and Henderson to save Nicks, Colston and Meachem.

Smith is the best DE the Saints have at the moment, as hard as that is to admit. I would find it very strange if Spags would not want to keep him around with a restructured contract - that is if Smith is willing to restructure his contract.

And who would be the alternative to Bushrod at LT at the moment - Strief or Brown? That doesn't seem like a move the Saints would make without having a legitimate replacement for him in the wings.

I was thinking the same thing about Bushrod he wont be going anywhere hes to good of a player and the Saints dont have anyone to step up and take his place yet

Smith, as unproductive as he can be, is still our best d-lineman and I'm sure Spags would want to keep him around, but the production has to at least come close to the cost.

Bushrod is unlikely to be cut or traded, but stranger things have happened.

As you guys pointed out, it looks like several players will restructure or look elswhere. I can certainly see Smith, Vilma, Ellis, and Henderson restructuring, and Bushrod signing a more cap friendly extension.

Ideally all the restructing/extending will buy us some time to address things in more detail in 2014 when the salary cap skyrockets.

Shanle, tracy porter, sed ellis are on the hot seat

Bushrod improved quite a lot this year, I don't think he gets released, we would atleast get a mid round I think if we traded him

Smith is on the bubble, I think see how he performs in spags system for the first couple weeks and if he looks anything like he has the past 2 seasons add an injection of youth in there and give galette and hopefully Romeus more snaps

It must be tough taking a pay cut because you know you didn't earn your money. Who would want to stay here for say half of their pay vs. getting three quarters pay elsewhere?

Smith would be released or restructured before the season because we need that money to retain Brees, Nicks, and Colston (in that order).

Not necessarily if they all sign end-heavy contracts - again I would advice not to look at the cap space as a concrete limit of how much they can spend on next year's real salaries, but as a limit under which Loomis and the FO have to fit the short term salaries of the roster. They have numerous ways of doing it, none of which even include releasing players or restructuring contracts.

What is going to happen with the salary cap in 2014? Someone mentioned a hefty raise?

The make up of the salary cap is quite complicated to try and explain, but basically the annual cap is based on the income that teams earn during a league year.

In the newest CBA the sources of that income have been expanded greatly from what they used to be under the old CBA, and now that annual income is calculated by the income created by "all revenues" (AR).

This "all revenues" (AR) category now includes pretty much all of the various revenue streams available, like: ticket sales, revenue from luxury box suites and premium seating, local and national broadcasting (TV/radio/Internet) royalties, concessions, parking, local advertising, stadium leasing, and merchadising.

The projected AR pretty much determines the eventual salary cap for all the 32 teams in the league - after some complicated calculations we are left with an "unadjusted salary cap per team" - and this is where the new percentages of division of the annual revenue between the players and the owners also matters the most, because it is the players' percentage of the annual revenue that is used to calculate the salary cap.

So, to finally answer your initial question: The NFL negotiated a new TV deal with the major North-American TV channels that show NFL games on a weekly basis - CBS, FOX, and NBC - which will continue until the 2022 season. With this new TV deal, these three networks have to pay the NFL an annual fee of $1B/each, making the annual revenue from those three alone $3.1 billion/year, representing a 63% increase over the $1.9 billion paid annually by CBS, FOX and NBC under their current contracts. Also, two months earlier, the NFL signed a new deal with Disney's ESPN channel, which increases its annual fee to $1.9 billion from the $1.1 billion it used to be.

The new TV contract officially begins after the 2013 season, which is why the AR is going to see a formidable "jump up" and cause the annual per team salary cap to increase quite drastically.

Sorry for the long explanation/answer, but I wanted to make the causal relationship between the new TV deal and the annual salary cap as clear as possible.