I fear that the Saints will just end up having to take a lot of cap hits for defensive players who will not be playing most of the year, or at all, and they will HAVE to let those players go with the cap hits, simply in order to have enough bodies to have 11 men on the field on defense all season...forcing the Saints to move on to cheaper, lesser known players in a lot of positions. The cap hits from lost players are going to be the real teeth of the punishment for the team.

IIRC, suspended players' salaries do not count against the cap.

I'm sure they don't count against the 53, but I seem to recall getting an exemption for their cap figure also.

If we cut them, many of their cap figures skyrocket.

I'll try to find more info on cap exemption for suspended players.

Yeah this part of the cap stuff with suspensions is something that I admit I know very LITTLE about. But I think we have to get ourselves used to the idea of, it is going to be a crazy year on defense. I believe Jeff Duncan said there were nine players still on the current roster, who were active from 2009-11 who may be considered as possible bounty "suspects" for suspensions and/or fines or discipline. After seeing what they did to Payton, Vitt and Loomis, I figure all those nine guys are all gonna be out for something.

It's gonna be substantial, and Vilma is the worst of it because they mentioned him specifically by name. If Vilma doesn't count against the cap while he's suspended, then that changes the picture a lot...but will the Saints want him back next year etc if his suspension is a looooong one, like say it's more than a year? If he gets an "indefinite" suspension, like Williams, how long do they wait before moving on?

Not to beat a dead horse, but I do believe in my gut that the ultimate point of the punishment on Vilma by the league is going to be, to get him out of football somehow, without actually literally forcing him to go. Make Vilma's situation just bad enough, so he cannot keep going, and has to hang up his cleats. I think that's what they (Goodell) will want to happen.

I'm also assuming that, even if they stagger the suspensions, if it's nine guys (I pessimistically think it will be a lot of guys) then at some point the Saints will have to sign some journeyman type people off the street, to fill in 6, 8, 12 games on short notice, at the very least. That is going to be very crazy indeed.

I think Rogers' fury is totally PR related and 100% about the NFL image. I don't think he wants Vilma out of the NFL as much as he wants everyone to think he's furious about what happened.

He's mostly accomplished the image problem by his actions against Loomis and Payton, which by the way didn't involve the players union screaming bloody murder. Thats a fight I don't think he wants to play out all season long.

A moderate penalty for the players involved is probably best for all.

Everyone agrees some of the players should be punished, but he'll have a dogfight from hell with the players union if he goes overboard with it. Maurice Smith is probably licking his chops.

Well, Ellis is another piece of the puzzle.

His cap hit for 2012 seems to be $7.575M, but according to my calculations there's only about $800K left in the guaranteed $19.5M of his contract, so the Saints could free up a lot of cap space if they were to cut him.

On the other hand, if the Saints' FO and Brees are able to come to an understanding in regards to the structure of the long term contract, where his initial cap hit would be fairly low while still including a lot of guaranteed money - Ellis' contract comes of the books next off-season, which would allow for a bigger cap hit for Brees in 2013.


Jabari Greer is another player who's salary will come of the books after this coming season, so that'll be another $6.15M of cap space for Brees' contract.

The Saints could also try to get him to sign an extension with a restructure, which could keep him with the Saints for couple of additional seasons while bringing down his cap hit for this coming season.


The bottom line is that there are ways of making Brees' contract work even if he is given the highest overall value contract in the NFL and a big amount of guaranteed money to go along with it - it's all about the structuring of his contract and of all the other players' contracts in relation to his annual cap hits.