Marshon Lattimore restructures contract, gets Saints near salary cap

Marshon Lattimore restructures his contract, gets the Saints near salary cap compliance:

Bang: the New Orleans Saints restructured their contract with star cornerback Marshon Lattimore, which gets them very nearly to salary cap compliance days before the start of the new NFL fiscal year. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that the Saints opened up $18.45 million in salary cap space through this Lattimore restructure, which converted $8 million of his base salary and his $15 million roster bonus into a signing bonus that will be counted against future years.

The end result: Lattimore’s cap hit has dropped to just $8.9 million from its previous heights of $27.4 million, which led the team by a considerable margin. He’ll have more manageable cap hits hovering between $22.4 and $25.9 million over the next four years, which could look like a bargain as the salary cap continues to recover from the COVID-19-depressed seasons.

But as for this year: depending on where you look, estimates have the Saints over the 2022 cap by as little as $5 million or as much as $7 million; we’ll split the difference and guess that New Orleans still has some work to do while being in the red by approximately $6 million. That will be easy to manage through an additional restructure with Taysom Hill (potentially saving up to $7.2 million), with other options on the table like extensions for David Onyemata (who could free up $5.9 million in a new deal) and Marcus Davenport ($6.3 million). An extension, pay cut, or outright release for Bradley Roby (whose $10.1 million cap hit ranks among team leaders) is also about to be determined.

And all of those options need to be considered because the Saints will take a $12.9 million hit in dead money should Terron Armstead leave in free agency. Finding a way to re-sign Armstead would undo that, sure, but it feels like a long shot. If he takes a big-money deal from another team the Saints will need to do more than reach cap compliance. They need to keep digging and open up more room to re-sign their own players while adding a couple of free agents.

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