Good news, everyone: the New Orleans Saints only have $29.2 million in dead money on the books this year. With the 2023 season kicking off in just a few days it’s the perfect time to take stock of the Saints’ accounting and how it compares to other teams around the league.
Remember, dead money is the amount leftover from restructuring contracts with players who are no longer on the team by converting salaries into signing bonuses and spreading out the cap hits to make dollars stretch a little further. But sometimes (well, often for New Orleans) when players are released from their contracts or leave in free agency, those signing bonus payouts accelerate onto the current-year cap, meaning the Saints are paying for players not on their roster. It isn’t ideal, but sometimes it’s the cost of doing business.
And right now the Saints are carrying just over $29.2 million in dead money — a figure that ranks 12th around the league, and which makes up about 12.9% of their salary cap commitments this season. That’s a far cry from the 21.2% and 26.5% dead money charges the Saints had to work around the last two years. Folks, that’s progress.
But where is all that dead money coming from? And where do the payments rank among the team’s top salary cap hits? More than half of this year’s dead money comes from expired contracts with David Onyemata ($10.1 million) and Marcus Davenport ($7.6 million), both of whom left in free agency. Smaller hits are due for Malcolm Jenkins ($3.9 million), Wil Lutz ($2.4 million), and Deonte Harty ($1.4 million), plus an assortment of minor charges from other players.
Will things get better on this front next year? That’s hard to say. Players whose expiring deals will leave behind dead money in 2024 include Andrus Peat ($13.6 million) and Jameis Winston ($10.6 million), as well as Tre’Quan Smith Smith ($1 million) and Carl Granderson ($80,000). It’s a moot point if any of them re-sign with New Orleans, but that’s the cost of letting them walk in free agency. The Saints will need to make a decision on Michael Thomas, too, but that’s a much more complicated situation (and thus a conversation for another day).
With all that said: here are the Saints’ top 10 cap hits in 2023.