Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

People are talking like the Falcons are close to the cap and surprised they could get Judon and Simmons, or think Terry Fontenot brought some super secret cap wizardry, but the truth is that the Falcons and Saints both could make lots of cap room, but shouldn't, because maxing out to win now with aging players is a mistake and would cost them later.

https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space

Sites like the above that list a teams current salary cap space don't really list their 'true' max salary cap space unless you dig into the number and do a quick copy and paste to Excel and add some things up. Contracts typically include language that allows the team to restructure a players contract without the player even needing to sign anything, simply by converting most of their base salary and/or roster bonus to a signing bonus and cutting them a check. Even if the player could refuse, 99% wouldn't because its the same money, sooner, with more guarantees (for example its protected from cuts or suspensions), but helps the team because on the books it can be prorated over 5 years, adding void years if needed. The 'true max salary cap room' the Falcons have if they went 'full-Loomis' when even Loomis is starting to hold back could be calculated by taking every player with a 2024 base salary + roster bonus above the minimum for their veteran status, subtracting that minimum salary, multiplying the remainder by 0.8 (as 80% can be prorated to future years over 5 years), and adding that to the true salary cap room, for each such player.

On overthecap.com it seems you can see this amount if you select 'Extension' as selecting 'Restructure' does not add any potential void years and shows zero potential to restructure an expiring contract such as AJ Terrell.

Based on this, the Falcons have the following additional salary cap space:

Approximate Restructure potential:
$9m Kirk Cousins
$11.5m Jake Matthews
$12m Grady Jarrett
$9.5m Jessie Bates
$7.5m Kaleb McGary
$5.8m AJ Terrell
$3.3m Kyle Pitts
$3m Kaden Ellis
$4.2m Matthew Judon
$2.3m Younghoe Koo
$2.1m Lorenzo Carter
+ Small amounts under $2m for various other players
=$88.8m+ additional salary cap room (copied the Extension column dollars to excel, deleted the cells where an extension causes a small cap hit for some reason on minimum salary players, and did SUM function)
=$95.9mil True Max Salary Cap Room.

In other words if the Chiefs accidently made a clerical legal error that allowed Patrick Mahomes to become an unrestricted free agent and Mahomes requested a $400mil signing bonus prorated at $80mil a year over 5 years + $10 mil base salary the first year doubling every year from his new team, the Falcons could fit that one small additional contract under their 2024 salary cap with simple restructures an amateur fan with access to a computer with google can figure out. But if the Falcons did this (and maybe Mahomes is one of the few players it would be worth it for) it would put them in a world of hell for a long time, unable to cut any aging ineffective player, and for example Mahomes suffered a major injury and was forced to retire, the Falcons would violate the salary cap and receive a historic punishment.

By contrast the Saints have $10.8m existing salary cap room + $30.3m restructure potential for a total max salary cap room of $41.1m, less than half what the Falcons have. They could likely sign a player to a contract larger than any existing contract in league history, though not as big as the Mahomes deal above, and remain under the cap. However, since they are fairly close to maxed out they would get get into dangerous territory quickly, especially since an injury that could force Carr to retire would be more likely.

Last season the Saints were down to something like $5 million true max salary cap room. Every large contract that could be restructured was. I believe James Hurst was the largest base salary contract at $3-4mil. Maybe I didn't count the nickel and dime potential restructures of backups that could have yieled a few hundred thousand each and the Saints could have got to $10mil under in 2023. That shows how insane the 2023 Saints salary cap situation was. The Falcons could give Mahomes $400 million signing bonus now and be no worse off than the 2023 Saints after signing Carr etc. Maybe you do that for Mahomes. The Saints went that far for Carr.

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

Just to show how quick this is, I did a test and ran the numbers for a random team, the Buffalo Bills. It took me less than 2 minutes. The Bills are $10.6m under the cap and actually fairly maxxed out on restructures because they ate massive dead cap trading Diggs and must have had to do a lot of restructures to take the $31mil cap hit. They could generate $25.7m with restructures for a total of $36.3mil true max salary cap room. But the Saints are $96 mil over the 2025 cap while the Bills are only only $3.7mil over, so overall the Bills are in a better cap position, but could not add quite as much this year.

The model team of the NFL currently is the Chiefs so I will run their numbers too. The Chiefs are $17.4m under the 2024 salary cap and could generate an additional $83.9m from restructures for a true max salary cap room of $101.3 mil, plus they are $8.1mil under the 2025 salary cap.

The 49ers are $52.3m under the 2024 salary cap and could generate an additional $60.7m from restructures for a true max salary cap room of $113mil, plus they are $38.9mil over the 2025 salary cap.

If you look at the 2023 Saints, it is insane that they had only about $5-10mil true max salary cap room and were about $80mil over the following years salary cap. No team in the league today is that bent over backwards. The best teams have retained about $100mil more financial flexibility than the Saints.

The Falcons are not close to the salary cap. Their roster is full of contracts the Saints would have restructured to go from $80 million over the cap to under, they just didn't restructure them yet because they didnt need to. To see how close a team really is, its more important to look at whether they have needed to restructure most of their big contracts. The restructures are the credit cards, its hard to know if someone is in financial trouble without looking at their card balances and only looking as their savings account.

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

I played through my first regular season in Madden yesterday. I had to cut Carr, Kamara, Honey Badger, Juwan Johnson, Taysom Hill, and a host of others to have any kind of breathing room in the offseason. Had to just incur the cap penalties as long as they didn’t outweigh the savings. Also had to let Adebo and Chase Young walk. Couldn’t afford either. I think it may be a sign of what’s to come. Although you can’t do the things Loomis does on a video game.

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

And Loomis CAN do the things he does. ;)

I don't know anything about Madden. How is the cap set and is it in line with the expanding real cap?

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

The cap expands and you can restructure deals but the restructures are preset. It’s not completely accurate to real life which is a complaint of a lot of players.

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

Thanks. Both my sons are really into it, but my heyday was pong in the 70's. ;) I

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

Speaking of Failclown's cap ...

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

If you can't do in Madden what you can in reality, Madden is not very meaningful for reality. There is nothing very special about what Loomis does, its the savings in overthecap for an 'extension' ie restructure with adding void years if needed. I think the programmers at EA would be smart enough to figure it out. I think its most likely they made an unrealistic cap as a conscious choice. If they made it realistic, any player could take the Chiefs or 49ers Super Bowl roster, free up to about $100 million under the cap with restructures, sign every useful free agent to back loaded contracts, and punch their ticket to the Super Bowl for 2-3 years, then reset the game when cap hell hits for the 2027 season and they are having to go all in and kick the can every year just to tread water at 8-9 every season. In the real salary cap, most teams have $100 million to spare if they restructured everyone, but they dont do it, because once you start doing it you have to keep doing it or else go full rebuild. Its like a mild diabetic going on insulin or something (I am not a doctor expert), its hard to go back. And once you have been restrucuring a players deal for many years in a row it actually costs a lot more to cut them than to keep them on a 1 year basis. So instead of 'having to cut' those players you mentioned to free up cap, you have to free up cap in order to be able to cut them, and you have to take big cap pain 1 year in order to get them off the payroll for future years and ever move on.

Re: Why the Falcons and Saints Have Plenty of Salary Cap Room but shouldn't use it.
 

If the Saints aren't above .500 at the trade deadline, they should really look at unloading current high-priced players and even guys like Adebo who have big raises coming up. Taylor and Kool-Aid as the starting CB's is not a bad thing for next season.