Originally Posted by AsylumGuido (Post 946034)

Let me try restating this ... the Saints' Mickey Loomis and Khai Harley are not restructuring player contracts because they HAVE to restructure them. They are restructuring them because the contracts were designed to be restructured when they were first written two, three, and four years ago. They know now who is to be restructured next year, and the year after, and the year after.

Originally Posted by AsylumGuido (Post 946224)

I had posted this in the Free Agency thread but it applies to this topic perfectly.

https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/sta...71324956356613

This is a perfect example of how the structure of contracts can affect the ability to retain key player. Cooper's $100 million five year contract has straight base salaries of $20 each of his last four years. There are no roster bonuses as part of the $100 million. No workout bonuses. It appears that the base salary isn't written with a team unilateral conversion option.

These are all common components used by Harley and Loomis in the average Saints contract construction giving the easy ability to readily free cap when needed. With the same $100 million outlay they have the ability to reduce that $20 million cap hit with a simple restructure in year three and retain the player with only a $7 million cap hit freeing up $13 million. On the other hand, the Cowboys may be forced to release the player while still taking a $6 million cap in in dead money from his initial $10 million signing bonus. They only free up $14 million in cap AND lose the player.

All the details are here on Spotrac.

Originally Posted by AsylumGuido (Post 946600)

Still only the three restructures to this point. The Saints still have until March 18th to convert 2022 base salaries to signing bonus proration and until March 20th to convert roster bonuses to signing bonus as I pointed out earlier in the thread.

Originally Posted by AsylumGuido (Post 946619)

And here they come again.+ I'll post the details once they become official.

https://twitter.com/FieldYates/statu...12145272913929

That gets us to within around $30 million of the cap limit.