All the more reason to account for expenses in future periods when they count as a smaller percentage of the rapidly expanding annual cap.

All the more reason to account for expenses in future periods when they count as a smaller percentage of the rapidly expanding annual cap.

The best way to win it all is to spend all your present money, a bunch of future money, and maybe some rolled over past money all once to to field a team that would cost $50 million over the cap on present money alone, all timed to when your draft talent and QB are peaking. You cannot do this if you don't roll over any money from the past and you don't have all your present money because you are already spending it years ahead even when you are not that close to a championship. We almost snuck into the playoffs but we would have quickly been shown the door if we did. We had no receivers and big questions at QB and are losing half of our top free agents and gaining nobody of consequence. Cap management is cyclic. Unless you have a HOF QB you do probably have to borrow against future salary caps with deferred money to win, but you can't borrow every year, or else you are not really able to outspend competitors, you are just borrowing to pay your own debts and not being able to get a competitive advantage. We need to bite the bullet now and take some cap hits so that in the future, when we have more of the pieces to contend as a two dimensional team not a good defense that lacks QB, receivers, TE, etc, we can go on a true spending spree then. We should take the cap space we have now and use it to cut Andrus Peat or trade him to the Atlanta Falcons. Brees last season was the end of our window. We can mortgage the future to remain about 9-8 and hope to sneak into the playoffs, or we can clean up our salary cap so that when we do have another window we can actually add a lot of key players not just have to to make 15 restructuring moved to tread water and only lose 2 starters.

We only almost suck into the playoffs because of an unprecedented rash of injuries to key personnel. That can happen to any roster including the all in timing approach you describe. As is we are set to make another run this year with what we have. And the next year.

You make your own luck. Even since we got lucky on Brees shoulder in 2006 we are consummate gamblers willing to write off injury histories in any player we draft, sign, or extend as bad luck. And then when our many high injury risk players go down they force shifts and gaps in protection that expose our healthier players to additional injury risk.

And in 2021 it was not just injuries that were at fault. We knew that Michael Thomas was our only proven starting WR by a country mile and that no other receiver had the experience to start at WR or was coming out of the draft with enough potential to start. We had a bunch of undrafted role player types and one mid round draft bust who had never been consistent. And we knew that Michael Thomas was not returning phone calls and was coming off a big injury and questioning surgery. We had to let Emmanuel Sanders and could not replace him, not being Mickey Loomis' iphone broke during free agency, but because of what I am saying, that the salary cap was mismanaged and we didn't have the ability to make a move because of it. WR was the weakest part of our team and it was because of the salary cap and our strategy of throwing away mid-round draft picks with claims that we have so much depth we cant use them. And have we addressed experience at WR this free agency? No way Jose. Maybe we will draft one, though we were willing to throw away those draft picks for a sexual predator with a history of tearing both ACLs. But even if we draft a WR, clearly clearly we could use an experienced veteran WR who we know will start the year healthy, and we are no signing one, because the salary cap matters.

We only almost suck...

That's your point of view and I respect that.