Let's be serious here. No Saints salary outlook is truly daunting. Only so to the uninformed.

https://twitter.com/TheSaintsWire/st...03008813740032

If we were the Patriots the media wouldn’t say what they say about us every year when it comes to the cap. The media hates New Orleans.

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.

The Saints are one of the most successful franchises over the last 20 years. Teams like the Jags, Lions, and Browns have had plenty of cap flexibility over the course of the last decade. What has it got them? What exactly has the Saints situation kept them from doing? We were plays away from a Super Bowl multiple times. You’d think we were bottom feeders because of how we manage the cap with the way some y’all talk about it. The Rams did everything many of y’all don’t want to do to win a Super Bowl: max out the cap and mortgage the future. They brought in big names on big contracts. That fiscally responsible approach only works when you have a Tom Brady or a Patrick Mahomes and a roster that actually buys into that ideology.

I repeat ...

The Saints have not been utilizing their current strategy for 20 years. In the early years the Saints were a young team eager to move on from aging vets even if it meant taking big cap hits. We got rid of Brooks, Horn, etc. We didn't trade up in the draft as much and we founds gems like Evans and Nicks in the middle rounds. We had the flexibility to trade players like Ricky Williams and Jimmy Graham because we hadn't restructure their contracts to maximize prorated money and the more modest cap hits implied were manageable under our less leveraged salary cap. Somehow over the years we became this king of debt team. Perhaps Loomis worried he had blown Brees' final window for a championship with blunders like Jarius Byrd and he wanted to make one final push. Then when Brees retired he couldn't bear a reset and went full speed ahead. The Saints success was likely do to Brees and Payton. Now with the Raiders coach and QB and a worsening cap strategy, we may very well become the bottom feeders. If the last 12 years we don't have a ring and our trend is downward. So sorry if I want to imitate teams that do have a ring in those years now crown Loomis the top genius.

The Rams strategy has been different from ours. The Rams went through a rebuild, cleaned up their salary cap, and accumulated draft picks. They built a young core of Goff, Gurley, Donald, and Kupp while staying well under the salary cap. Then seeing a window while Goff was on his rookie deal, they went on a spending spree and built a super team with the consequences to be damned. They almost made it but were fairly evenly matched with us even with RG as the 12th man and not a match for the Patriots. Then Goff and Gurley fell apart after that year. Still at the time their salary cap was leveraged but not as leveraged as ours is now, and they saw they still had a chance at some window with Donald as the best defender in the league, Ramsey among the best, and Kupp a top receiver. So they took their salary cap medicine to get rid of Goff and Gurley despite very painful cap hits that hurt them in the present, and they made a big move for Stafford structuring the contract so it was cheap in the present and knowing it would be an anchor on their cap situation later. With Stafford they made one more run and won it all. Then they added Robinson and Wagner to try a repeat, and Stafford broke down. Now they realize they are too leveraged and need to start over and they took cap hits to get rid of Robinson, Ramsey, and Wagner. The Rams are playing a timing game with the salary cap and it has worked. They have never gotten so leveraged that they could not move on from a player who was clearly no longer worth his pay, until now with Stafford probably, and now that they see that they are rebuilding. The Saints are duct taping a brick to the accelerator and that is not working. There are two strategies in this league that can work. The Chiefs where you know your QB makes you a contender every year so you keep steady and stay out of trouble with the cap. Then there is the Rams/Bucs where you rebuild, stockpile cash, draft young talent, max the credit cards when you hit your window until you are too old and broke, then rinse and repeat. Both those strategies win championships. Ours hasn't won anything more than the bottom feeder the last 12 years, and without Brees and Payton we may be bottom feeders if we can't move on from bad contracts and don't have the patience to plan for tomorrow.