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The $75 million contract extension that Alvin Kamara signed with the New Orleans Saints looks a little more different the longer you examine it. On paper, it’s a five-year deal tying Kamara to the Saints through 2025. But in reality, it’s functioning as a four-year contract that will require attention before 2025.
ESPN’s Field Yates reported that Kamara’s deal includes a $15 million signing bonus prorated over the life of the extension. He is also owed roster bonuses guaranteed for injury in 2022 (worth $6 million) and in 2023 ($4 million), with non-guaranteed roster bonuses in 2024 ($1 million) and 2025 ($2 million). Those roster bonuses could be converted to new signing bonuses to create more salary cap space, if need be. From 2023 to 2025, Kamara has $500,000 per-game bonuses and $100,000 workout bonuses.
Yates added Kamara’s annual base salaries to his report:
- 2020: $833,000
- 2021: $2 million
- 2022: $5.5 million
- 2023: $9.4 million
- 2024: $10.2 million
- 2025: $22.4 million
And that’s where things get tricky. Here are how his annual salary cap hits shook out, per NewOrleans.Football’s Nick Underhill. These are the numbers that really matter:
- 2020: $4.07 million
- 2021: $5 million
- 2022: $14.5 million
- 2023: $14 million
- 2024: $14.8 million
- 2025: $25 million
2022 is the first year Kamara will be accounting for a huge chunk of salary cap resources, but the Saints won’t be in position to save any cap space by cutting his contract until 2023. Hopefully he remains healthy and productive and won’t come up in cap casualty talks. But if anything goes off-script, that’s the soonest the Saints can get out of this deal.
And even if everything goes as planned — if Kamara becomes an annual All-Pro and never misses a game, developing a Hall of Fame resume — there’s no way the Saints will leave his contract untouched by 2025. He won’t account for $25 million against the salary cap (14.2% of the projected 2021 salary cap) because the Saints will have reworked his contract before then to create more cap space. If anything, it just moves up their deadline to rework his deal.
However, the more realistic result would be Kamara getting in on the semi-annual Saints contract restructures Michael Thomas, Terron Armstead, and Cameron Jordan have worked out with the Saints. His contract can be reworked and kicked down the road here and there to keep it affordable as the salary cap rebounds from the dip expected in 2021.
So for now, it’s a situation worth celebrating. Kamara and his family have financial stability for years to come, while the Saints have one of their best players under contract and another avenue of finding more salary cap flexibility. It’s the closest thing you’ll find in the NFL to a win-win scenario.
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