SmashMouth

What we know about Drew Brees is that he will play for the New Orleans Saints in 2018. Yes, the final three years of his contract will automatically void on March 14, which would make him an unrestricted free agent and the hottest commodity on the market.

But Brees has said repeatedly that he has no interest in leaving New Orleans, the Saints are poised to enter 2018 as one of the favorites in the NFC and there’s no reason to think the quarterback has any interest in testing the market. He’s certain to be a Saint for 2018 and probably for life.



What we don’t know about Brees is how he and the Saints will get his contract to where it needs to be for this to happen. They can’t simply do nothing. If they do nothing, those final three contract years void at the start of the new league year on March 14, and the Saints will be stuck with $18 million worth of signing bonus prorated on this year’s salary cap in addition to whatever salary they end up paying Brees for 2018. This would be a crusher, and New Orleans can’t let it happen, which is why March 14 is a very real deadline for Brees and the Saints to come to agreement on some kind of new contract.

What will that contract look like? Well, that’s another thing we don’t know. To this point, Brees and the Saints have not had any serious discussions about it, which is probably because the Saints don’t fear him leaving. But at some point in the next month, they must. So here are some questions and answers about the Brees situation and where it’s headed:

What was that you said before about $18 million?

Yeah, this is NFL salary-cap math. Prior to the 2016 season, the Saints and Brees did a new contract that was technically a five-year deal even though it was really only a two-year deal. That deal included a $30 million signing bonus, and NFL rules allow teams to prorate signing bonus money over the life of the deal, up to five years. So, since 30 divided by five is six, the Saints have to count only $6 million of Brees’ signing bonus each year of the “five-year deal.” But the 2018, 2019 and 2020 seasons are just “dummy” years, added onto the contract solely for the purpose of salary-cap proration.

If nothing is done to the contract, all three of those years automatically void on March 14, and by rule, all of the remaining $18 million of salary-cap proration would accelerate onto this year’s cap. Once again, the Saints would be stuck with that charge before they even signed Brees. So if they signed him for, say, one year and $28 million, his salary-cap charge this year would be $46 million, which obviously would be way too much.

OK, so can’t they just agree that this year won’t void, and keep the contract as is otherwise?

Sure, they could. If they did that, Brees would be scheduled to earn a $22 million salary this year, and the cap charge would be $28 million ($22 million salary plus $6 million of the signing bonus). The Saints could carry that, for sure, and just delay this decision by a year. The problem is, Brees would have to agree to that alteration, and he wouldn’t be getting anything out of it. Even as his insistence that he doesn’t want to go anywhere hurts his negotiation leverage, that March 14 deadline creates some. The Saints don’t want to get hit with that $18 million cap charge.

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