I disagree. Any team could do what Loomis did. Any of us could do it. I could email the electric company, rent/mortage, cable, etc right now and tell them I plan to consider my payments to them this month as renewal bonuses and that I planned to stay with them 5 years but all those years would be voidable to me if I didn't and therefore I was able to live on $300 a month because I prorated the electric bill over 5 years, making any giant credit card debt I might have easily manageable, and in fact I would be paying all those bills on said credit cards. That is all Loomis is doing, its not genius, its just that other GMs would prefer to leave a few rounds in the chamber for a rainy day, whereas Loomis let his umbrella go to make it rain for Taysom Hill. Converting current salary and incentives into prorated bonuses is easy but comes with costs. Did it allow us to field a likely 'competitive' team despite starting the season with the least cap space? Sure. But only by stretching the strategy to the limit and putting ourselves in the same situation for next offseason. What this means is that we have to keep doing this every year just to stay neutral and replace what we lose and field a merely 'competitive' team. If we get to a point where we think its our big year and we really want to break the bank and go all out, we can't do that, because we are already going all out just to break even. And if we ever find an elite franchise QB again and want to sign them to a long term contract, we will likely have to suffer big losses at other positions to do it, because if we pay for that contract by restructuring others, we won't be able to do the other things we did this season, and we will lose free agents and not replace them. Essentially we went 'all out' in some of Brees' final seasons and broke the bank to win it all but it didnt work out. Now we are stuck in a cycle of having to go all out just to remain borderline playoff contenders, which we are. But I suspect we would be better off just hitting reset. Imagine what a GM could do in a 'win it all' season if we started 30 million under the cap and we did all the restructuring to cut even more, or to keep players like Armstead and Williams while also adding players like Landry and Mathieu. Also, Loomis filled one major hole at WR by trading next years 1st round pick and more future picks. Ultimately I am not sure most teams can win it all without hitting big on some mid round picks, yet Loomis seems intent on never taking a mid round pick if possible, and protesting by selecting a player who was projected to go undrafted if he is ever forced to make one by lack of trade offers.

It will be an interesting season. If nobody gets hurt on our team and everyone gets hurt on other teams I guess we can do more than appear in the playoffs. But right now I just feel we mortgaged a lot in future salary and future draft picks in order to give a totally unproven coach a team that could probably win 10 games with a proven coach and might get to play a road playoff game or two.

I do think we got good value on Mathieu and Landry. That does not justify Loomis' general strategy. We should not be trading future picks to win now when we probably dont have a team to win it all. We should use the resources we have to budget an escape from the horrendous disasterous Peat and Hill contracts, not creating a situation that will actually force us to resign them to extensions to balance the budget next year and claim its a 'smart move' because we are so leveraged we have to extend them to save a few million in 2023 at a costs of stringings tens of millions of committment to them into future years. We need to start managing our cap more than 1 year out so we can build a roster with sound long term decisions and not with Mr. Glass and the Marshmellow Man.

Bookmark this for mid-season.

We are often great at mid season because half our brittle players we like to sign have not had their inevitable injuries yet. Lets compare notes at the end of the season. A great outcome is possible but I dont see it as likely.

We are often great at mid season because half our brittle players we like to sign have not had their inevitable injuries yet. Lets compare notes at the end of the season. A great outcome is possible but I dont see it as likely.