Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

New Orleans Saints numbers as of Tue 26 March

# of contracts
49

Previous Year Carryover
2.7M

Adjustments
-576K

Adjusted Cap
125M

Team Cap
121M

Cap Room
3.3M


Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team | News | NFL.com


Interpretation:

Before we can sign anyone (Nnamdi, Harrison), someone needs to restructure or go.

When you look at cap space always subtract $3Million that 3M will be consumed by the following which fall into the cap:

Drafted players
Practice squad

The remainder of that 3M is a safety net incase we have an injury and have to go out and get another player for a position where we have no depth... Example a FG kicker.

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

Harper's restructure can create some more cap space if/when needed and if Ivory is traded - like has been rumored by many - it'll free up another $2M of cap space.

Just those two moves could free up around $4-5M in cap space, which could afford Asomugha's and one other free agent's contracts - naturally that's just speculation since it's unknown what the Saints have offered Asomugha.


...so it's not looking so gloomy. :-)

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

Do you have to be under the cap to sign someone or can you go over the cap and correct post hoc?

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

Unless you meant "pay cut" or "extension" instead of restructure Harper is not possible. Like Smith, the remaining years left in his contract leave zero room for a restructure with out a crippling effect next year..

Harper is also too expensive to cut this year. That was just a butt ugly contract to start with based on his performance. Next hear his salary goes up to +7.9M but his dead money goes down from 6.1M to 3.05M.

Be very cognisant of a few things, because what Smith did to help us this year makes matters worse next year.

2014 Will Smith Cap Hit - $14M

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

As of 4pm NY time on March 12th no teams can go over the salary cap with out penalty.

Dallas is doing a juggling act and playing with fire by agreeing in principal with players to amounts that put them over the cap. The catch is that BEFORE they can sign the new player they have to make room for that signing.

The cap figure is a hard figure unless we want to take a cap hit next year as a penalty.

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

Naturally what I meant with the restructure was a re-working of his contract with all of what that entails, whether it be an extension, pay cut or something else Loomis has up his sleeve. My guess would be that he probably is forced to take a pay cut or face the possibility of being released in favor of cap relief next year even though it wouldn't help much this season. Another very real possibility is that they extend his contract by a year if in fact they (i.e. RR and the FO) feel that he'll fit the current defensive philosophy and scheme. In any case, I do think he stays with the Saints, but his contract will be re-worked in order to provide some cap relief.

And you don't actually think that Smith will play next season with that cap hit?! If they release him next offseason, they'll save about $10M of that $14M in cap, so that'll be acceptable all things considered.

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

It is a little more complicated than that in regards to Smith and Harper..
What I am pointing out is "what that entails".. In this case the devil is in the details.

Smith took a $6M pay cut for this year... it wasn't any restructure that gave us cap relief. Cutting Smith next year leaves us with 3.35M in dead money. To understand what that means, this year we only have 1.1M in dead money.

If Harper does exactly what Smith did that would still leave us with 3M dead money next year if he is cut.

Both "restructures" combined if both are cut would leave us with 6.3M in dead money for 2014. Paying both of them would result in an increase cap hit of 6M.

So when you think you are saving 10M next year on Smith, you are not.. it will cost us 5M to replace him + 3M in dead money so next year we take an 8M hit because of Smiths contract... so that is not a full 10M in savings. It is more like 4M and Brees contract goes up 1M to that savings is cut to 3M.

Here is a list of Ballooning Cap Hits for 2014 that have huge amounts of dead money associated with them: 11M increase in Cap hit from these three players next year.

Jari Evans - 2014 Cap hit 11M (+5M from 2013) Dead money if he is cut 9M
Ben Grubs - 2014 Cap Hit 9M (+4M from 2013) Dead Money 9M
Curtis Lofton - 2014 Cap Hit 5.2M (+2.1M from 2013) his 2015 Cap hit is 9M

In a year when Strief, Graham, and Jenkins come up for FA we can not afford to have 6.3M in dead money.


As far as I know, restructuring does not alleviate dead money, which is why Smith had to take a cut in salary this year.

The moral of the story is that if we think we are bad in 2013 with Cap space... wait until 2014.

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

I assumed the points you made were a given, so I did not elaborate on them any further than I had to.

Of course when I'm saying that they'll save $10M of the $14M cap hit by possibly releasing him next offseason I'm speaking of the relative savings made against the cap hit - not actual total savings, just relative net savings. Also, not to go too deeply into it, but I really don't think it would cost the Saints $5M to replace Smith with equal talent - not now and especially not a year from now.

And I do know that there are many players who's salaries will jump come next season - as there were several who's did this year as well - but that is simply something you have to contend with when the franchise is using the strategy of backloading contracts, like Loomis does constantly. When a franchise hands out enormous contracts, like Loomis has to some in the past, there's a pretty good chance that the team will have to take some hits in the form of dead money, but I think that's simply the nature of the beast. It'll probably be like this for every single future offseason, so I think we'll just have to get used to it, and hope that some of the future draft picks hit gold and become "cheap" impact players for about four years at a time.

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

It'll probably be like this for every single future offseason, so I think we'll just have to get used to it, and hope that some of the future draft picks hit gold and become "cheap" impact players for about four years at a time.

There in lies the problem. Our draft picks have never been gold.

Re: Remaining salary-cap space for each NFL team
 

Well, I think you're being a bit too harsh buddy.

For example, Graham, Colston, Evans and Nicks could all be considered "hitting gold" as far as I'm concerned, and there are others as well... not to mention the great UDFAs the Saints have been able to pick up along the years.