New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr has not met expectations through his first 11 starts with his new team, running an inefficient offense and deflecting responsibility to his coaches and teammates when pressed about it by the media. He’s hardly been the franchise savior Dennis Allen and Mickey Loomis trumpeted him as.
What are his salary cap hits looking like? Everyone knows by now that a four-year, $150 million contract isn’t exactly what it seems. There are so many factors at play: funny money, void years, prorated signing bonuses, roster bonuses that can restructrured, guarantee triggers and incentives (both likely and unlikely to be earned, with different cap implications). It’s tough to make heads or tails of it. With that in mind, here are Carr’s annual cap hits as his contract stands:
- 2024: $35.7 million
- 2025: $45.7 million
- 2026: $55.7 million
- 2027: $5.7 million (void)
So what are the Saints’ options? Releasing Carr outright in 2024 would cost an additional $17.1 million, totaling $52.8 million in dead money. That’s about 23.5% of this year’s salary cap, so we can rule that out. Carr has a no-trade clause, and there’s no reason (from his perspective) to waive it and go one-and-done in New Orleans. Not when his $30 million base salary is guaranteed anyway. He has all the leverage here after the Saints gave it to him in this contract.
What about a post-June 1 release? That would actually break even and not cost the Saints any more salary cap resources … on June 2. The Saints would still be paying $35.7 million for having Carr on the books, but they wouldn’t add anything to it. The problem is they would have to keep that $35.7 million salary cap hit on the books at the start of the league year, through free agency and after the 2024 NFL draft while figuring out other ways to get under the salary cap. They wouldn’t receive any cap benefits by cutting Carr with that post-June 1 designation until after June 1.
So what’s to be done? The most likely outcome now is the same as it was when Carr’s deal was finalized in March. The Saints structured his contract with a planned restructure in the 2024 offseason that will convert most of his base salary into a new signing bonus, saving them more than $23 million against the cap. It will also mean that Carr’s cap hit of dead money in 2027 will approach $11.5 million. That’s assuming he plays out his four-year deal. If he’s released before it expires, that dead-money cap hit will accelerate to the current year.
When might that happen? This was designed to be a two-year deal with a team option in 2025; that’s when the Saints have an exit ramp to decide whether keeping Carr is worth the price (and trouble) or if it’s better to move on. If they do restructure his contract in 2024 and then release him in 2025, it would leave about $33 million behind in dead money but still save the Saints roughly $13 million. So much depends on the salary cap’s continued rise; some estimates have it reaching as high as $282 million by 2025, which would make that dead-money hit for Carr significantly easier to swallow.
Oh, so $33 million, that’s all? It’s ridiculous that we’ve gotten to this point in the discourse surrounding Carr and the Saints, but that’s the reality. Carr hasn’t played well enough through his first 11 games to earn the promise of 57 more starts (plus any potential playoff games). He hasn’t played well enough to justify the contract the Saints paid him, even if it is in line with other starting quarterbacks’ deals, and he hasn’t performed at a high enough level to dissuade them from drafting a young passer to develop as the future of the franchise.
Is that likely? No, not with Allen as head coach, and Carr’s contract structure essentially bought him another year on the job. Carr is here because Allen recruited him. If the Saints are stuck with Allen’s quarterback anyway, they may as well make him go down with that ship. We can see Loomis making the case for a third futile year with Allen at the helm already, now that he’s got his quarterback with a full season to settle in (not that a nine-year veteran should need it). Can’t you?
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