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The New Orleans Saints agreed to terms with quarterback Drew Brees on a two-year contract extension valued at nearly $50 million, keeping the best player in team history around until he’s ready to retire on his own terms.

On its surface, a team paying out $50 million to anyone doesn’t really scream “team friendly,” but in this case it’s an apt descriptor. Here are four ways the new deal between Brees and the Saints benefits New Orleans:

1. It’s far below the market value

Brees will earn roughly $25 million per year on this contract, which is the same amount he signed up for back in 2017. That may not sound like much, but consider how the market for quarterbacks has developed since then. Middling talents like Kirk Cousins and Ryan Tannehill are commanding $29.5 million or more annually, and Brees is certainly better than them.

He had an argument to make for even $27 million per year — adjusting his percentage of the salary cap for inflation since 2017 — but instead settled for less. This will go a long way towards helping the Saints retain their own free agents and find upgrades in the open market.

2. A two-year deal doesn’t limit the Saints

This would be different if Brees had demanded a long-term deal running four or five years from now. Instead, he accepted a shorter-term contract that will just count for the next two seasons, allowing the Saints an easier transition to a new starter when the time is right. And if Brees suddenly falls off a cliff in his productivity, well, the Saints won’t be paying out dead money for years to come after he’s retired.

It’s also worth noting that the Saints like to use automatically voided years in their contract extensions to help with salary cap accounting. While these deals do result in a larger, accelerated cap hit once the contract expires, so long as they’re active it helps teams create more space beneath the salary cap when they need it most.

3. It clocked in ahead of schedule

The Saints were able to negotiate this new deal before the eleventh hour, avoiding Wednesday’s deadline of 3 p.m. CT — when Brees would have been due more than $21 million in dead money, with no ways of kicking that can down the road.

While the new contract extension will carry more guarantees and raise the total salary cap damage in the long term, this is something the Saints knew was coming and planned for. Getting it done before it’s too late gives them time to address other issues right now.

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