Tag: salary cap

Report: Saints are set to make big decision on Derek Carr’s future

NFL Network reports the New Orleans Saints are set to decide on Derek Carr’s future. But cutting him won’t be easy, and he has a lot of leverage in trade talks:

The New Orleans Saints aren’t playing today, but here’s your Sunday splash report. NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo shared some insight to the team’s big offseason decision on Derek Carr’s future with the team.

“He’s got a $10 million roster bonus that is fully guaranteed. And then he’s got another $30 million in base salary for this upcoming season that becomes guaranteed three days into the league year in March.”

There’s your deadline for the Saints to make a decision, but they’ll really need to act quicker. They’re in the red by more than $50 million and must be compliant with the salary cap no later than March 12. Carr has the heaviest salary cap hit on the team at $51.4 million. You do the math, or check here to see how the Saints could get under the cap after cutting him. It isn’t easy.

Garafolo continued: “So the Saints are gonna have to make a decision on what they want to do with Derek Carr, who does have a no-trade clause I might mention as well. The Saints (are) massively over the salary cap, what else is new, then they start to renegotiate contracts. I do know that quarterbacks who have $40 million basically in guarantees aren’t real quick to give that up. So if the Saints come to Carr and ask him to do that, I think he would resist, and then potentially could be gone.”

Carr has already made it known publicly that he would refuse to accept a pay cut. So the options are to restructure his contract and have this discussion again in 2026, or to try and work with him on a trade. Carr wouldn’t waive his no-trade clause to get from the Las Vegas Raiders to the Saints back in 2023. It’s a safe assumption he wouldn’t waive it to get from the Saints to another new team in 2025, especially if he has options waiting in free agency. That’s a scenario Garafolo sees as realistic.

“If he’s gone I would expect interest from multiple teams out there. There’s not a lot of great options both in free agency and the draft. He’ll have interest,” Garafolo finished.

Sure, the Saints could explore trading Carr. That would be less expensive than cutting him or restructuring his contract. But any team trading for him may prefer waiting to save their draft picks so they could sign him as a free agent, which would mean lowball offers for New Orleans. The quarterback has leverage here. Carr’s future may be in Kellen Moore’s hands if the Saints do officially hire him as their head coach. If Moore can see a path forward with Carr at quarterback, he’ll be back. If the new coach wants a new QB, the Saints could make it happen.

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How much money has Chiefs DL Chris Jones made in his career?

Here’s how much money Kansas City #Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones has earned in his career.

Defensive tackle Chris Jones has had a distinguished career in the NFL and has been a staple of the Kansas City Chiefs roster since he was selected by the team in the second round of the 2016 NFL draft.

How much money has Jones earned in his career?

After eight years with the Chiefs, Jones has made an incredible amount of money for a defensive lineman. According to data from Spotrac, His career earnings total $125,773,058.

While he could probably retire more than comfortably on that amount, Jones he signed a new five-year contract extension worth $158,750,000 in 2024.

It appears that despite the fortune he has amassed, playing football takes top priority for him, and the money is simply a byproduct of his success.

With Kansas City set to play against the Philadephia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX this Sunday, it’s safe to say he is 100 percent focused on the present and not on how much he will earn to suit up next season.

How much money did Chiefs TE Travis Kelce make this season?

Here is how much money Kansas City #Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce earned during the 2024 season.

Travis Kelce, the legendary Kansas City Chiefs tight end known for his chemistry with quarterback Patrick Mahomes, is gearing up for his next Super Bowl appearance.

Super Bowl LIX will be his fifth opportunity to compete for the vaunted Lombardi Trophy, and he will make history alongside the Chiefs if they succeed in completing the NFL’s first-ever championship three-peat.

How much did Kelce earn this season?

Kelce is one of the highest-paid tight ends in the NFL after his years of success in Kansas City. In 2024, he renegotiated his contract with the Chiefs. Both parties agreed to a two-year deal for $34,250,000.

His base salary for the season was $5,750,000. Kelce also earned an $11,000,000 roster bonus and a $250,000 workout bonus, bringing his total pay in 2024 to $17,000,000 per Spotrac.

Based on yearly average pay, this made him the highest-paid tight end in 2024. According to OverTheCap, the Minnesota Vikings T.J. Hockenson is very close behind him in second place earning $16,500,000 for the season.

Von Miller on future with Buffalo Bills: ‘I want to be here’

Von Miller on future with Buffalo Bills: ‘I want to be here’

The 2025 offseason will be filled with important decisions for the Buffalo Bills that will steer the franchise going forward.

The team has 16 free agents to be mindful of this offseason, but one of the team’s most important decisions will be regarding a player already under contract.

Veteran and likely Hall of Fame edge rusher Von Miller’s future in Buffalo is largely up in the air.

His age (36 in March), recent injury history (2022 ACL and meniscus tear), and contract (owed $17.5M in 2025) make him a cut candidate for Bills general manager Brandon Beane.

Instead of paying a base salary of $17.5 million in 2025, the Bills could cut Miller and save about $8.5 million on the salary cap.

Miller addressed his future with the Bills following the team’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC championship game:

“However long my key card works in this building, I’m gonna keep coming up in here and I’m going to keep coming in and trying to make [a Super Bowl] happen. I want to be here. I plan on being a Buffalo Bill for sure.”

Over his three years in Buffalo, Miller has appeared in 36 games and started in 11. He has 14 sacks over that time, with eight coming in 2022, zero in 2023 (recovering from knee surgery), and six in 2024.

His 2024 season got off to a rough start as he was hit with a suspension that sidelined him for four games early in the year. However, he played well in the second half of 2024.

He led the entire NFL in quarterback pressure rate after Week 13 (25.5%). He was playing only limited snaps, but he was playing at an elite level when he was on the field.

Now, the Bills are forced to make a decision on Miller, who was signed in 2022 in hopes of getting Buffalo “over the hump” and playing in the Super Bowl. With a couple more injuries and a few more years under Miller’s belt, his $17.5 million salary in 2025 doesn’t look great from a cap perspective.

If the Bills and Miller part ways, his replacement on the edge could come via a trade. Rumors of the Bills trading for a defensive end have been swirling since the season’s end, especially since Myles Garrett requested a trade from the Cleveland Browns. This left Bills fans wondering about the possibilities of Garrett in Buffalo, and even left tackle Dion Dawkins showed his best recruiting efforts to land the star edge rusher.

If Beane and the Bills are looking for a splash on the defensive line this off-season, Garrett, Maxx Crosby, and Trey Hendrickson are names to watch.

The Bills’ front office has plenty to work on regarding roster construction, but the decision with Miller seems like it would need to be one of the first dominos to fall.

Seahawks restructure Leonard Williams’ contract, free up cap space

Seahawks restructure Leonard Williams’ contract, free up cap space

One of the many challenges the Seattle Seahawks face this offseason is finding a way to create more salary cap space. Seattle has been on the lower end of the league when it comes to active cap space, but on Thursday morning, they made a move to help alleviate some of the stress. The Seahawks restructured the contract of star defensive lineman Leonard Williams.

The Seahawks granted Leonard Williams a three-year, $64.5 million contract last offseason, and he did more than enough in 2024 to show Seattle a significant return on investment. Williams recorded 11 sacks across 16 games, becoming the first Seahawk to have double-digit sacks since 2018. His efforts earned him his second career Pro Bowl nod.

According to Jason Fitzgerald of Over the Cap, this salary restructure converts $18.745 million in salary into a bonus, reducing his 2025 cap number from $29.1 million to $14.06 million.

Unfortunately, the Seahawks will still have more work to do at fixing their salary cap. Even with freeing up $14 million with this move, Seattle is still projected to be $14 million over the current cap for 2025. As it stands, the top four cap hits to the Seahawks in 2025 are:

  • Geno Smith – $44.9 million ($31 million dead cap)
  • DK Metcalf – $31.8 million ($10.8 million dead cap)
  • Tyler Lockett – $30.8 million ($17 million dead cap)
  • Dre’Mont Jones – $25.6 million ($11.5 million dead cap)

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Behind closed doors, the Saints admit they have to rebuild

Behind closed doors, the New Orleans Saints admit they have to rebuild. A messy salary cap spreadsheet and a four-year playoff drought are powerful motivators:

The New Orleans Saints have drawn a lot of ire over the years for their stubborn resistance to rebuilding their team. They’ve continued to push money into future years and max out their salary cap resources to try and compete. Now, depending on where you look (and ultimately depending on where the NFL sets this year’s spending limit), the Saints are in the hole by $54 million to $72 million.

But now it’s gotten to a point where they can’t ignore the inevitable. After struggling to keep their heads above water in a series of 9-8, 7-10, and 9-8 seasons after Drew Brees retired, they finished the 2024 season at 5-12. That’s their worst record since the Hurricane Katrina-impacted season back in 2005. It’s time for change.

And while general manager Mickey Loomis has pushed back on that notion publicly, that isn’t what he’s telling candidates behind closed doors. During a guest appearance on the Athletic Football Show, Dianna Russini shared some insight to the Saints’ expectations for their new head coach.

When asked about the team’s ledger and whether they understand they may need to take a year to untangle their salary cap accounting, Russini responded: “They do. And that’s been part of the conversations they’ve been having with these coaches that want this job. Which is, ‘We’re going to practice patience here, knowing that we’ve put you, if you were to get this job, in this position. It’s not your fault.'”

That situation isn’t for everyone. Candidates who are in great spots with elite young quarterbacks (like Joe Brady and Kliff Kingsbury) have chosen to stay put. Others have gone for greener pastures with more money to invest in their roster (like Aaron Glenn), or opted to wait for better opportunities to open up in next year’s cycle (like Mike McCarthy).

But for a young hotshot offensive coordinator like Kellen Moore, who got thrown out with the bathwater by the Los Angeles Chargers a year ago? Who the Dallas Cowboys moved on from a year before that? And who just saw someone in his same situation, Bobby Slowik, jettisoned by the Houston Texans a year after getting these same head coach interviews? The fit might make sense. Desperation is a strong motivator. It may be driving Moore to stay in New Orleans after the Super Bowl. And it may push the Saints to finally work on getting out of the salary cap mess they’ve made for themselves, too.

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Saints’ offseason assets ranked among the NFL’s worst war chests

PFF has the Saints in the worst position to be in: a bad team without many offseason assets. They need more draft picks and more salary cap space to compete:

Pro Football Focus has New Orleans Saints in the worst position to be in as we get closer to the talent acquisition portion of the offseason. The Saints are a bad team without a lot of assets to change this reality. That means they’re short on draft picks and salary cap resources.

PFF ranked New Orleans as having the third-worst assets this offseason. Most teams at the bottom of the asset rankings are playoff teams. The Seahawks, who rank at the bottom, were a tiebreaker away from winning the NFC West. Then you have the Saints and Atlanta Falcons at 30 and 31st.

These rankings were determined by three categories: effective cap space, restructure potential and draft capital. The problem for the Saints is they’re the only team without any effective cap space after pushing so much money from past deals into this fiscal year.

New Orleans does have a good amount of restructure potential, as always, but most of the restructuring will be to get under the salary cap. It doesn’t mean they won’t sign anyone in free agency. New Orleans signed Chase Young last year after starting in a similar situation. However, the restructuring won’t give the Saints much to play with this offseason.

Building the roster will come through the draft for New Orleans in 2025. PFF’s rankings is a great depiction of that. Having one of the lowest sets of assets shouldn’t be too startling for New Orleans. This was expected to be a job that required a multi-year renovation.

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How Jaguars can create $44 million in salary cap space this offseason

With help from Over the Cap, here is how the Jaguars can create an additional $44 million in salary cap space this offseason.

As of now, we do not yet know who the Jacksonville Jaguars’ general manager is going to be. Interview requests have just recently been submitted by the Jaguars.

However, if the team’s future general manager wants to go full throttle in his first season and bring in a number of additions to help Liam Coen in Year 1, the Jaguars have the ability to create an additional $43.76 million in cap space, according to Over the Cap.

The primary way that the Jaguars could accomplish this is through simple contract restructures–or kicking the salary cap can down the road.

As always, there is a lot of nuance that comes with these salary cap moves, but in short, a restructure is taking some of the current year’s salary cap charges and pushing them to future seasons.

One example of this would be if a player has an $8 million base salary with three years left on his contract. The team could take $6 million of that base salary–which all counts towards the current year’s salary cap–and convert that to a signing bonus, which has the flexibility to be pro-rated over the life of the deal.

So from there, $2 million will stay in the current year, $2 million will go into Year 2 of the contract, and $2 million go into Year 3.

The end result in this scenario is that this would then lower the current year’s cap hit from $8 million to $4 million, with $4 million going to the two future years.

The obvious benefit is that in the moment, more cap space is created. But those cap charges don’t just disappear either. So the downside is that the player’s cap hit in future years will now increase.

The ideal candidate for a contract restructure is with a player who has more than one year left on their deal and someone who comes with a sizeable cap hit. Walker Little, Davon Hamilton, Foyesade Oluokun, and others, are a few candidates on the Jaguars.

While that $44 million figure from Over the Cap is if the Jaguars push things to the limit this offseason, this isn’t an all or nothing proposition either.

I certainly wouldn’t expect Jacksonville’s general manager to squeeze every bit of cap savings out of all the eligible contracts, but oftentimes there is some maneuvering that is done by GMs to gain more offseason flexibility.

For the Jaguars who are coming off a four-win season and I’m sure will want to put as many pieces as possible around Coen, some positions of need this offseason include cornerback, safety, defensive tackle, offensive line, and tight end.

As of now, the Jaguars have $32.27 million in available cap space, which ranks as the 17th-most. This figure does not yet include their rollover amount of unused cap space from 2024, which was estimated to be among the higher totals in the NFL.

In addition to restructures helping to create more cap space, an extension can work in a similar fashion and one extension candidate for the Jaguars is Travon Walker.

Veteran cuts are another avenue towards cap savings, and ESPN recently predicted that two prominent Jaguars players are potential cut candidates this offseason.

Steelers head into 2025 offseason with massive salary disparity

Not team allocates their salary cap the way the Steelers do.

If you want to know why the Pittsburgh Steelers offense has underperformed, look no further than their spending habits. The Steelers once again head into an offseason with the most ridiculous spending disparity between offense and defense of any team in the NFL.

The Steelers currently have $53 million in salary cap allocated for the offensive side of the football. Pittsburgh’s highest-paid offensive player is tight end Pat Freiermuth. His projected cap hit for 2025 is $12.885 million.

Meanwhile, on defense, it’s a very different story. The Steelers have just north of $166 million wrapped up on the defensive side of the football. That Freiermuth cap hit? It’s peanuts compared to defense. In fact, 12 defensive players will have a bigger hit in 2025. Let that one sink it.

We aren’t sure which is more concerning. How little the Steelers spend on offense or how poorly the defense plays despite spending so much more.

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Saints involved in two trade proposals that would reshape the NFL

This B/R writer says two New Orleans Saints veterans getting traded to the AFC North could impact the NFL playoff picture:

Rebuilds typically lead to an exodus of veteran players as the team gets younger. As the New Orleans Saints begin their rebuild, reload or whatever they want to call it, they too will get younger.

Bleacher Report’s Gary Davenport saw two Saints veterans as bargaining chips. He cooked up six trades that could reshape the league, and New Orleans was involved with two of them. Davenport had the Saints sending two players to the AFC North: Derek Carr to the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tyrann Mathieu to the Baltimore Ravens.

Carr to the Steelers would probably make the fans in black and yellow pretty upset and fans donning the black and gold may rejoice. Carr would feel very similar to the acquisition of Russell Wilson. He’s been discussed already as a possible trade target for Pittsburgh.

While Davenport is right to say the Steelers showed they don’t need an elite quarterback to be competitive, their limitations on offense still showed. On the note of competitiveness, Davenport pointed out “the opportunity to play for a contender” could entice Carr to waive his no-trade clause.

Davenport pairs Mathieu with Baltimore to help a struggling pass defense. This trade may become less likely because the Ravens improved mightily after moving Hamilton to deep safety. It would allow Mathieu to play closer to the box, but Baltimore may not be in the market for safety help anymore.

But what would the Saints get out of this? In terms of draft picks, Davenport’s trades have New Orleans getting a fourth-round pick in 2025 and a conditional pick in 2026 for Carr, plus a fifth-round pick in 2025. As for the salary cap benefits? Trading Carr before June 1 saves the Saints $11.3 million. But trading Mathieu saves only $16,000. That’s it. The team would still be paying $11.3 million this year if they trade Mathieu before June 1. They might be better off holding onto him.

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