AsylumGuido

LOL! Do any of you truly take the time to read that drivel?

BakoSaint

TSDR

WW_Who_Dat

Nope … just figured it would probably help to lighten the mood for anyone caught up in another Bako vortex.

BakoSaint

The thing is, nobody makes a thoughtful counter argument to my two key assertions about the recent Loomis cap strategy: that is makes us unable to move on from bad contracts and that running year to year on credit we can’t match teams that build up a savings under the cap and then combine savings and credit at once to go all in. People just reply with tik tok memes and raving madness about how any strategy but Loomis’ will make us become the Browns or Lions. It’s like debating teenagers. I am beginning to wonder if Guido is two kids standing on eachothers shoulders in a trenchcoat pretending to be an adult.

Boston Saint

Yes people do make thoughtful counter arguments Bako, you just refuse to acknowledge them or give them any validity. Additionally when you make statements about the Saints cutting people's feet off and calling parts of their staff the worst in the history of the NFL then turn around and say other user's posts are like arguing with teenagers it's telling about your nature. I always thought Guido was the King when it comes to lacking self awareness...but now I think you might have that crown.

AsylumGuido

It's a waste to try to debate this guy, Boston. He has HIS idea of how HE wants things run. Fine. But that isn't the way things are run and that's not the way most informed people want things run. This guy posts the same negative crap over and over and over again. Does he not get the idea that most people do not buy into his philosophies nor his vile diatribes over Saints leadership? This guy needs to face the fact that if he wants a team that runs things the way he thinks they need run he might want to shop around for one of the bottom feeders to support because Loomis and gang aren't going anywhere. And Loomis and Harley's way of doing business is quickly becoming the norm so perhaps another sport might be more to this guy's liking.

Not to mention this loser called my mother a cheap whore. There's always that.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

rezburna

Point A: We can’t move on from bad contracts.

Who’s contract do we need to move right now that we want to but can’t? Just because there’s a player that YOU want gone with a big cap hit number doesn’t mean that that’s what the front office wants, nor does it mean that’s what is best for this team. We’ve been able to go out and grab the players we want with relatively little issue and whenever we truly are ready for a rebuild the strategy can change to cap maximization without a hiccup.

Point B: We can’t match teams that save up money.

Like who? The Bears? The Panthers? The Jaguars? The Lions? The Colts? Because the Chiefs have $652k in cap space right now. The Bills have $1.4 million. We actually have $14 million…so I’m not sure who we’re trying to keep up with and why.

"The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.” - Stokely Carmichael

Rugby Saint II

BURN!!!

That's a great argument for a third grader.

Bako does seem to have a slanted view of the Saints.



It's a good thing he didn't talk about my mama.

Great come back Rez.

BakoSaint

So for Point A, the contracts we should move on from in my opinion are those of Andrus Peat, Jameis Winston, Michael Thomas, Alvin Kamara, and Taysom Hill. Everyone can have their own opinions but those are the contracts that stand out to me. But the exact players are not important, the real question is could we move on from any bad contract if we wanted to. I don't see it as a reasonable defense to say we don't have any bad contracts and we never will have any bad contracts so it doesnt matter. Every team has bad contracts, and when you future caps are already more leveraged than any other team and your bad contracts are getting renegotiated every year to backload more money that will come due if you move on, it makes it hard to get out of a bad contract when and when you have one. The dead cap if we cut those players is as follows: Thomas $32m, Peat $21m, Hill $24m, Kamara $25m, and Winston $15m. Thomas has 3 consecutive years of injury missing 80% of his games overall in that time. Peat averages 12 games played per season his entire career and our oline will never not have instability and injury shuffles that negatively affect every other olineman as long as he is around. Winston is QB whose season has been ended by injuries 2 years in a row playing backup on a team with a youngish starter, a 4th round pick we traded up for, and another backup option in Hill, way too much redundancy for a guy we would bench Andy Dalton to bring back last year. Most people thought the Saints would move on from Peat, Thomas, and Winston this offseason but instead we kept all 3 because it allowed us to hold off the credit card bill one more year. Logic says thats why we did it, not because we love all 3 players. All I see the last few years is we can only move on from our short term deals. Whenever a player is with the team long on a big contract we restructure and backload the contract all to hell and we can never move on because its never cheaper to move on than to restructure if you are so far above the cap you can only afford to live one cap year at a time. The only long term player we could move on from was Armstead and thats because he wasn't washed and the bidding war therefore made it more expensive to keep him. We have a system set up that selects FOR retaining washed players and liabilities.

Kamara's peers McCaffery, Cook, and Elliott have all been cut or traded away. Nobody in this league commits big money to an aging RB whose stats have already begun to decline. Yet here we are with Kamara associated with $25 million dead cap if we move on. And none of those other RBs are in line for 6+ game suspensions. Not only did we not look to reduce the money due to Kamara this offseason, we increase the money due in reality. Kamara would have lost game checks when suspended, but instead we converted 90% of his salary to a bonus due to our cap situation. What that means is his game checks go from about $500,000 to more like $50,000 so we figured out a way to get a declining RB 90% of his pay while suspended for assault, while other teams with similar RBs found a way to move on. Kamara is due to $19 million next year, but don't worry, we can restructure and bring it down to $11 million by guaranteeing him another $8 million even if he commits another assault and making his dead cap number more like $32 million in the 2024-2025 offseason when he will be even older and in a running back by committee.

Taysom Hill is very injury prone over his college and pro career. He is also much older, about Cam Newtons age. He is also a player whose best attributes are power running and special teams returns and coverage, not very safe positions against injury. We tried him as a starting QB and it did not work. Then we tried him as a TE and he got beat out for the #1 gig by an undrafted free agent converted WR. He is dangerous with the ball but he just isn't great at running routes or catching passes. So what are we paying $10-15 million a year for? An injury riddled 33 year old running back who has never achieved 100 rushing attempts but racks up eye popping highlights in a few games against bad defenses while absolutely disappearing in other games? A backup TE who managed 77 yards receiving on the season? A backup QB to take the ball out of our $40 million a year QBs hands when we already have a $10 million backup QB and a 4th round pick backup QB we traded up for?

But I am sorry. The Saints have no bad contracts. All these contracts are wonderful. And if they did all struggle we could easily take the cap hits to move on. Well, either that or we are basically hoarders who maxed out our credit cards and get by telling ourselves that really we are rich because the trash in the living room is all priceless collectables we can't throw away.

The other concern is there are contracts we don't want to get out of now but might soon. Star cornerbacks have a way of being great until they are garbage. See Nnamdi Asamgaugh and Darrelle Revis. Lattimore is getting older and missing more time. The day is going to come when his contract is a liability, and the smart thing to do is to let things come to a natural conclusion at the end of the deal when the cap hit is small. But instead we restructure to backload it more every year. We are probably looking at $30 million dead cap when we need to move on. Likewise we hope Derek Carr is the next Drew Brees but he may also be the next Drew Bledsoe. If he is the latter, I can't see how we will ever be able to afford to move on if a young QB like the 4th rounder we drafted comes to replace him. We will restructure Carr every year and we could be looking at $50 million plus dead cap if we need to move on in 2025 or 2026 after restructures to backload and convert his $30 million salaries in 2024 and 2025.

Point B examples of teams we can't match because they saved money. The Bucs cleaned up their cap before they made their run with Brady, giving them the ability to bring in more stars when they went all-in, yielding them a Super Bowl. The Rams did a similar thing, before they started their run with Goff they had a war chest of cap room. They leveraged to the max over time. But now both the Rams and Bucs have added trophies and are both rebuilding and moving on from expensive players. But also I don't think we will match up well against the Falcons and Panthers this season. They both shed a lot of bad contracts like Ryan, Julio Jones, Deion Jones, McCafferey, etc. The Falcons took some key free agents from us. The Panthers kept their draft picks and have the #1 pick QB.

But lets say every draft pick and free agent we acquired this season hits the lottery and we go to the Super Bowl and have a grueling coin flip match against the Chiefs and threaten to shut Patrick Maholmes out of any more rings in his prime. The Chiefs are $51 million under the 2024 cap. We are $61 million over the 2024 cap. They can out spend us because they have saved. Meanwhile we are maxing out the credit cards to go 7-10. We will get under the cap in 2024 but we will do it by letting go young stars and hanging on to washed up liabilities willing to restructure and add void years.

MatthewT

Despite the salary cap woes, the Saints are doing a fairly decent job rebuilding the team a little at a time. Not very long ago even Loomis admitted that the way the Saints have done business with their cap isn't the ideal situation. I do believe the way the contracts were recently redone for Thomas, Peat, and Winston will allow the Saints for an easy exit from these players after the 2023 season, if they choose to do so. As for Kamara and Hill, it will be a bit longer if the Saints choose to move on from them.