https://twitter.com/DextonThibodea1/...59166165422080

https://twitter.com/TheSaintsWire/st...61691499216902

Ryan Ramczyk missed several games before having surgery on his knee during the 2021 off season. He has been limited in practice and was given a rest day each week last season. I realize we need to find money somewhere now but don't want to invest further in a player who may be on his last leg.

Ramczyk is no worse off than 75% of players that have been in the league for a few years. As has been said a million times, the NFL is a 100% injury league. Besides, he's arguably the best offensive lineman on the team.

That said, a restructure does not mean investing anymore money at all. It's paying him exactly what he was to receive already this season, but accounting for it in future periods.

Restructures tend to force investing more money in players. By avoiding accounting for the money due now and pushing it off for future years, and then spending the money freed up now on additional players who also have backloaded contracts, we create a situation where we maximize the cap hit of cutting those players in future. If you leave a players contract alone the cost to cut them in the next offseason might be $15 million dead cap. But if you convert $20 million of their salary to prorated signing bonus suddenly the cap hit to cut them next offseason if they struggle may be $35 million. Usually early years in a big contract are guaranteed while later years are not guaranteed. How restructures tend to force more investment is that say next season if that player has a $15 million dead cap to avoid paying a $20 million non guaranteed salary we can move on. But if there is a $35 million cap hit to cut them and get out of a $20 million non guaranteed salary and we also have a ton of other backloaded contracts and are $60 million over the cap, we can’t afford that cap hit, even if we know the player is washed up. So in the next offseason we restructure again to convert that $20 million salary to another prorated signing bonus. Then the next offseason its $50 million cap hit to cut that player. So by playing the restructure game we dont just pay the same money later. We end up effectively guaranteeing most or all of the contract. If Ram breaks down we lose the ability to bail on the later non guaranteed years if we restructur, which could lead to investing tens of millions more.

If we keep kicking the can down the road eventually we will have to pay through the nose for what we have today. I agree with Guido that the salary cap is growing but we cannot expect it to cover our mounting debt. Eventually, Gail Benson is going to have to right some pretty big checks for some underperforming players who are not on the roster any longer. That could get old soon. It would for me if I was writing the checks.

It's time to get out of the win now mode and stop paying these bloated contracts and bring in some young depth without trading away our draft picks to move up for a particular player to get us to the Super Bowl.