Originally Posted by BakoSaint
(Post 996272)
I am willing to watch a rebuild if it is done right. I don't know how rebuild became a dirty word. It's a false premise that we have been 'stuck' in a rebuild and it isn't working. We have been stuck in the opposite of a rebuild since before Brees retired, going all in, maxing out future salary caps more than any other team, trading future draft picks and trading up to win now. Only in this 2023 offseason did we slowly begin to detatch the first brick from the pile on the bad pedal and possibly start looking to order the bolts to reattach the brake pedals.
We are ~$85 million over the 2025 salary cap already in 2024, the most in the entire nfl by just over double with the Browns ~$42 million over. That is a lot of things, but it is not a rebuild. It is more like a financial crisis. Will the imaginary analyst who says we can't get under the 2025 salary cap be wrong? Yes. But, will we have to make some dubious contract restructures with struggling, injured, and aging players? Yes. But finally this offseason we did not restructure more than the 75% or so of key vets we had to restructure. So, that means in the 2025 offseason we can cut or trade players we didn't just restructure, and actually reduce not increase our cap with releases. We could see players go like Kamara ($19 million cap savings), Lattimore ($11 million cap savings), Hill ($5 million cap savings), Ram ($6 million cap savings). If two are designated Post-June-1 cuts the savings may be even greater.
We are not yet in a rebuild. We are in the first year of a sort of pre-re-build slowing of insanity hopefully. If we continue on this route, we could be in a rebuild next year. We could lead the NFL in dead cap in 2025 but also potentially set sort of record for the biggest improvement in future cap deficit ever in a two year period if we continue to make cuts to bad contracts with aging players.
I am not against rebuilds, because rebuilds work. The Bucs could not have won a ring with Brady if they didn't come in with a monster stockpile of salary cap space to sign Brady, Gronk, and a supporting cast. The Rams could not have stockpiled the talent for their ring if they did not start way under the cap. The Lions would not have the talent they do if they did not lose before they one. We are in cyclic league and if you try to buy your way out of ever having a losing season, you will get stuck at 9-8 or 8-9 until your stars get grey hairs on their 5th restructure and then you will lose anyway.
The only way to win without a rebuild in this league is to have a generational QB like Brady or Maholmes, a generational coach like Belichick or Reid, and having both of those to be incredibly disciplined and trade away or let walk very talented players like Tyreek Hill, Tyrann Mathieu, Chandler Jones, Ty Law, etc so that you never get in salary cap debt and can constantly surround your star QB and coach with a good but perhaps not great supporting cost and let them carry the weight without getting in the kind of cap and draft pick debt that create long term problems. The Saints briefly tried this model at least in terms of trading expensive non-qb stars in the era where we traded players like Jimmy Graham and Brandin Cooks but Sean Payton was not quite on Belichick or Reid's level, could not quite hang in the biggest games, and could not do as well to bring in the right people to maintain minimum standards on the opposite side of the ball from his expertise. Therefore we abandoned this model, went all in to win now in Brees later years, came up short, and now need to rebuild.
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