| BakoSaint |
06-24-2023 11:56 AM |
Re: 2023 Saints Salary Cap Watch
It's a failure of logic to see the Saints making the same few moves over and over, borrowing money from future salary caps via restructures and trading up in the draft, and then declaring the Saints grand chess masters and citing as evidence instances where other teams made similar moves less frequently. Actually, being able to utilize a wider variety of moves to more positive results is a sign of a chess master. The guy who hasn't won the tournament in 13 years because he keeps making the same moves every game is not a master, even when those who are masters occasionally make that same signature move when the situation is more appropriate for it, or to have more variety and be less predictable and strike a balance.
Always borrowing money from future cap years since salary caps are growing is the most effecient way to manage the salary cap if you assume two things you cannot assume. 1. You will never want to cut, trade, or let walk in free agency a highly compensated player. 2. You want to balance your spending evenly year to year.
1 is a problem because sometimes you do want to cut, trade, or let walk a player who is aging, has off field issues, injuries, or doesn't fit your current needs. But if you have borrowed $30 million from future caps against that player accounted for in far off void years, all that cash becomes due if you move on. Of course, every team takes this risk on a freshly minted big contract, but they only give those contracts to players in their prime who they are very confident in. The Saints contracts are catholic marriages and they renew their vows annually with restructures so even moving on in year 3 or 4 or not resigning at the end of the deal is prohibitive because of all the prorated restructure and void years accumulated over the contract. If another team had to move on from a big contract, like say the situation the Broncos may face with Russ Wilson, part of the strategy to absorb the cap hit is to restructure other contracts to make up the difference and spread out the pain. But for the Saints every contract is already restructured annually just to get under the cap. If the Rams were run like the Saints, all their fans would still be hyping Todd Gurley's return to 2019 form they expect in 2023, because moving on would not have been an option. If the Falcons were run like the Saints, they would still be paying Matt Ryan $40 million or something and Julio Jones $20 million, because the cap hits to move on would have bee impossible to absorb. I am not sure exactly how the NFL rules work on this but it might even be possible for the Saints to default on the salary cap. Imagine if a highly paid Saint with a lot of prorated money had a brutal injury and retired, or a felony conviction where they had to be cut, or something like that, causing a $50 million cap hit, and all our contracts were already restructured, and any other cut would actually cause a larger hit to our cap. We could be the first team in league history to default on the cap. Or we could have a situation where we have the #1 overall pick in the draft but can't afford to sign the player because we can't get under the cap. Those are worst fears, but the general situation is we can't afford to move on from our Matt Ryan's, Julio Jones, Carson Wentz, and Todd Gurleys.
2 is a problem also. Yes if we spend the future cap now, and the future cap is 20% bigger, we can spend 20% more in theory. But that assumes steady spending. Another team can spend modestly, avoid spending the future cap for now, and then when they see their window, they can spend 100% of the current cap in the current year and that 120% future cap and best our 120% with their 220%. That is what the Bucs did, going from paupers to a super team during a brief run, as we chugged along with business as usual. There will always be a couple teams in the league coming out of partial rebuilds with cash to spare and then going all in and spending more present and future money in a year than our strategy of always spending present money in the past can match. If we want to try for perennial wildcard team, our strategy might work if not for the catholic marriages to the likes of Peat and Thomas. But it won't give us an advantage against teams that pick their moment to go all in.
Yes the Ram's made a Saints-like move restructuring Cooper Kupper. But if your style of chess is to move your bishop on almost all turns and a chess master moves their bishop occasionally, that does not make you the real master. The Rams have a ring that is barely over a year old. The Rams took their salary cap medicine moving on from aging players in expensive contracts in Jalen Ramsey, Allen Robinson, and Bobby Wagner, they are primarily rebuilding. They freed up a little house money with one restructure, but at the same time they are doing all the things we refuse to do, and they have results to show for it. The Bucs are rebuilding too. The Chiefs let expensive players walk and traded Tyreek Hill whose personal conduct issues have shockingly as a Michael Thomas limp have resurfaced. We are not chess masters. We are predictable, leveraged, and illiquid where other teams that seem to occasionally imitate us as actually successfully balancing debt and liquidity to remain flexible organizations capable of investing and divesting strategically.
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