SmashMouth

The New Orleans Saints just lost a chunk of salary cap space and it had nothing to do with signing a free agent, acquiring a new player or extending someone’s contract. On Monday, the league accounted for repayment of cap space loans given to multiple NFL teams at the onset of the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) during the 2011 offseason. Due to the murky waters surrounding the uncapped season and new terms in the CBA, the NFL allowed teams to borrow up to $3 million towards their 2011 cap and another $1.5 million towards their 2012 cap. The Saints took both loans up to the maximum amount, $4.5 million total.

No, the Saints didn’t do this because they were broke. It appears only 9 of the 32 NFL clubs did not take out some sort of cap space loan over the course of the 2011 and 2012 offseasons.

The reconciliation shrunk the Saints 2017 space, per the NFLPA, from $12,710,725 on Monday to $8,210,725 on Tuesday’s report.

There are currently 23 teams with more salary cap space remaining than the Saints.

Link back to USA Today