MatthewT

As much as many want the Saints to rebuild, it simply cannot be done. Let's assume the projected number of minus 50 mil in salary cap holds true for 2023. What you need to look at now is cap savings for a particular player or group of players. The way the Saints have most of their contracts structured, that cap savings number is going to be a negative or close to an even number. Example if you release a player with a 20 mil negative number, now you are negative 70 mil in the hole. If you release a player with a small gain, like 1 mil, then you are at minus 49 but you are also removing a contract that can be converted from salary to signing bonus, thus taking away a player that can help you gain positive cap space.

A larger scale example, let's pretend the Saints want to rebuild the team, and they are currently 50 million in cap debt. Let's assume Peat, Kamara, Lattimore, Jordan, Mathieu, Hill, Thomas, and Davis are all under contract and these would be the targeted players to release/trade to facilitate a true rebuild. Let's assume their cap savings for 2023 are all at 0 and now they are all removed from the roster. We are still looking at a 50 million cap debt, now where is that cap space going to coming from with no contracts left to convert? (To my knowledge no one on the Saints roster has a large positive cap savings number if released/traded)

The Saints situation, they are probably in a position in 2023 to move on from maybe 1 or 2 big contract guys at the most, likely having to use a post June 1st designation.

I am be no means an expert, just my interpretation of what I found through some research. If anyone wants to research this on their own, a good reference is https://overthecap.com/

AsylumGuido

You are correct. Another good source is Saints Spotrac.com