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The New Orleans Saints are used to getting creative in their efforts to work around the NFL salary cap, often backloading contracts and relying on crafty salary cap structure to max out their resources every year. However, there’s a chance that one of their favorite tricks won’t be available in the 2020 offseason, unless the league and the NFL Players Association are able to settle on a new collective bargaining agreement.
As recently pointed out by ESPN’s Dan Graziano, “Article 13, Section 7 of the CBA mandates that ‘no player contract extending into a season beyond the Final League Year may provide for an annual increase in salary … of more than 30 percent of the salary provided for in the Final League Year, per year, either in the season after the Final League Year or in any subsequent season covered by the Player Contract.’”
In translation: teams are not allowed to sign players to contracts with a raise of more than 30% in 2020 during subsequent years, though this doesn’t include prorated signing bonuses. According to Over the Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald, this is designed to stop teams from taking an unfair advantage of a potentially uncapped season.
Here’s an example: let’s say that a Saints player is under contract for 2020 on a $1 million base salary, with no other bonuses on the books. If the Saints were to sign that player to a contract extension, the most they could raise his total salary to in 2021 would be $1.3 million. They could still prorate payments (and remain under the cap) with a big signing bonus, but those can only be handed out when ownership has the funds on hand, in cash. For smaller franchises like the Saints, there could be a limit to just how far they can stretch themselves in a year with this added rule in play.
The Saints have circumvented the salary cap in the past with tactics outlawed by this rule; in 2014, they signed safety Jairus Byrd to a six-year, $52.5 million contract that featured an initial salary of just $1.3 million. That figure climbed to $2 million in 2015 and $7.4 million in 2016, climbs of 153% and 569% over the first-year base salary. Strapped for cash again in 2020, the Saints would normally be expected to use this strategy again, but that won’t be an option under the current CBA. Fortunately, it’s not a new development. General manager Mickey Loomis and his staff, headed by salary cap specialist Khai Hartley, have been planning for this.
If a new CBA is not ratified before free agency begins in March, the Saints will face an uphill battle to fit contract extensions (and pay raises) for pending free agents like Vonn Bell and David Onyemata on their books. They also could struggle to work out new deals with players who could benefit from re-signing ahead of schedule, like Alvin Kamara, Larry Warford, and Demario Davis.
However, there’s good news: NFL owners voted to approve the terms of a new CBA on Thursday, which precedes a vote by the NFLPA as soon as Friday. There’s no guarantee that the players will accept these terms right away, but teams are certainly counting on it. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Friday that multiple NFL franchises are poised to make roster moves should the new CBA be approved, which would void this 30% rule. Few teams have more pending free agents than the Saints, so it’s logical to think they may be in that group ready to make changes as soon as they’re given the green light of a ratified agreement.
There are now multiple NFL teams waiting to make roster moves based on the potential of a new CBA. If a new CBA is approved in the days to come, a flurry of roster moves will follow.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 20, 2020
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