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The New Orleans Saints lit up the fan base early in free agency with a controversial five-year, $57.5 million contract extension with left guard Andrus Peat. While Peat has twice made the Pro Bowl as an alternate, high-variance performance and a still-growing injury history gave many fans cause about committing so many resources to someone who was viewed as replaceable.
For the detractors: there’s reason to think the Saints may share some of their concerns, based off the structure in Peat’s contract. Of that $57.5 million total, just $33.85 million of it is guaranteed, including a $13 million signing bonus prorated over the length of the deal. But what’s interesting is a trigger written into it in 2021.
Peat’s base salary for 2022 ($10.85 million) will become fully guaranteed on the third day of the 2021 league year, giving the Saints a three-day window in which to make a decision. If Peat has not played up to expectations in 2020, they will have an opportunity to get out of his contract through a possible trade (freeing up just $1.2 million in cap space) or post-June 1 cut (saving nothing in 2021, but creating plenty of spending room down the road by prorating).
However, it’s more likely that the Saints will ride out the first three years of Peat’s contract. The savings don’t really make getting rid of him worth it until 2022 at the soonest, especially when those savings are counted against the dead money his contract would leave behind (meaning checks the Saints must write to a player not on their roster). This graph illustrates why it may take some time for the savings of life without Peat may be worth the trouble:
In other words: the view won’t be worth the climb until 2022 at the earliest, and likely not until 2023 (when cutting him would free up $9.225 million against the cap while leaving just $5.2 million behind in dead money). So Peat can safely be penciled in as the starting left guard in New Orleans for the next three seasons. That’s not ideal for those who didn’t want to see Peat connected long-term with the Saints, but a three-year contract is better than a five-season deal.
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