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The decision to acquire San Francisco 49ers linebacker Kwon Alexander on the eve of the NFL trade deadline has put the New Orleans Saints past another salary cap milestone. They’re now counting more than $276 million on the books for 2021, when the salary cap is projected to be $175 million. That’s going to result in many, many difficult decisions for New Orleans.
They were already flirting with unprecedented territory before trading for Alexander; but now his $13.4 million salary cap hit is on the books. But as large as that mountain appears to be at first blush, the climb to the summit isn’t nearly as difficult as many fear.
For starters, Alexander’s 2021 cap hit is not guaranteed, so the Saints can release him after this season without any financial penalty (but a big pay cut is much more likely, if he proves he can get healthy and help them win games in 2020). That puts New Orleans right back where it started, with San Francisco being the only team involved in this deal to walk away with any dead money.
There are other moves to be made that can lower that salary cap. If Drew Brees retires as anticipated, the Saints will recoup $13.5 million in 2021. Nearly $27.8 million can be freed up between restructures for Terron Armstead, Cameron Jordan, and Michael Thomas (though trading Thomas, as some have speculated, would result in an additional $1.2 million paid out against the cap).
Ryan Ramczyk and Marshon Lattimore are set to earn a combined $21.2 million while playing on their fifth-year options, so signing either of them (or both of them) to a multiyear contract extension would create plenty of breathing room. Nick Underhill of NewOrleans.Football explored more potential offseason moves in greater depth, which you can read here.
If the Saints can complete just the salary cap accounting deals mentioned above, they’ll be resting right around $203 million against the 2021 salary cap. That’s still over the projected limit, but it’s significantly more manageable. It serves to illustrate why all of the handwringing over salary cap calculations is so overrated.
So sure, the Saints have plenty of work to do in the months ahead. But they’ve overcome these kind of obstacles before, and there’s reason to believe they can continue to field a competitive team after doing so again. Finding a worthy successor to Brees remains the biggest challenge ahead of them, even moreso than this bean counting.
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