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The Final TD, DA's Lack of Authority, and the Consequence of Salary Cap Paralysis

The players asked DA to run the ball to get Jamaal Williams a TD. DA said no. The players did it anyway. They openly defied their coach. Then their coach called them out in the press conference. Then the players went on social media and basically said 'so what, we don't regret it.'

In theory, players would not try this with a coach who was more of a leader, who they feared.

But the reality may not be so simple. It's hard to count all the players who supported this. Winston said it was unanimous on the part of the offense. So lets look at who supported this: Winston (open tweet), McCoy (open tweet), Ruiz (other players have said he was an instigator to doing it), Peat and the rest of the oline (implied by their participation, but Ram was on IR so nothing from Ram), Williams himself, Juwon Johnson (open tweet), whichever receivers were in the game on that play, Cam Jordan (open tweet), Alvin Kamara (open tweet), and to some degree Derek Carr (said to reporters it was not concerning that the players overruled DA). Among these players, Carr, McCoy, and Jordan are captains, while Winston and Kamara were captains last year, so this a block including most of the teams leaders. There are probably more tweets I am missing too.

If it was simple, the coach would simply threaten to move on from all these players, cut loose the instigators and those who would not fall in line, and re-assert his authority. The problem is, we are $72 million over the salary cap. McCoy, Ruiz, Johnson, Jordan, Kamara, not to mention Carr, all have giants contracts, and at most we could afford to move on from one or two and still have to restructure all the rest. If the goal is still to 'win now' we have to restructure them all. They all have every dollar of dead cap ready to hit if we cut them that any player could ever have from max restructures every year. Carr, Jordan, and Williams all have guaranteed salaries for 2024. Any threat to shape up or ship out is empty, we can't afford to move on from many of these players. Allen could cut a symbolic few but the rest are still left to laugh in his face and disrespect him next year because cleaning house is fiscally impossible in our cap situation. Allen has no authority because the cap poorest team in the league doesn't have authority, the team has taken on a form of debt, and the players are their creditors, owed binding promises to money in future years where the team is over the cap. Add to this that it has been reported that the team may have some dispute with Lattimore and is exploring a trade or cut, Ramczyk who is owed a ton has a degenerative knee condition and might have sided with the rest of his oline if he was on the field anyway, the team has no money to replace anyone in free agency (or any additions in free agency would make it impossible to clean house even in 2025), and only two picks in the first 4 rounds to draft replacements.

Dennis Allen is a bad leader, but he has not lost the team only because he is a bad leader. He has also lost the team because being twice as much over the salary cap as any other team means no coach or executive for this team has the power other teams do. If Russell Wilson was on the Saints, he could bench Dennis Allen for the final two games not the other way around, because we could not afford to cut him. Mickey Loomis' cap management means the Saints can rarely afford to walk away from injury prone or underperforming veterans once they are given big contracts, but what it means for one player is nothing compared to a group. Today, or possibly earlier, Saints players realized they have that power. Loomis and DA cannot afford to walk away from a group of players like this without violating the salary cap. Money is power. The Saints don't have that power. They can't afford to cut. They can't afford to replace. For all we know the players have called their own plays whenever else they felt like it and that has been part of their turn around.

So, the players openly defied DA. They continue to do so. There won't be consequences. We can't afford consequences. The coaches are idiots so the players may be right. But ultimately a team has never won it all without a coach. And no coach can have power when a team is so in debt that if a group of players defy him, the only option is to restructure much of the group and bring them back for 2024. You reap what you sew DA and Loomis, you reap what you sew.