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The New Orleans Saints have been active in creating more salary cap space and retaining their own free agents, hammering out contract extensions and restructuring existing deals while also agreeing to pay cuts with a few veterans on the roster’s fringe.
With the NFL’s 2020 salary cap established at $198.2 million, the Saints went into free agency with limited resources. But they’ve gotten creative and managed to re-sign Drew Brees and David Onyemata, while redoing their contracts with Kiko Alonso, Patrick Robinson, Michael Thomas, and Terron Armstead. Here’s where they stand.
Right now, it appears that the Saints are somewhere around $10,515,877 beneath the salary cap. That doesn’t account for the team’s free agent contract with Malcolm Jenkins, which hasn’t been reported in great detail just yet. But if that deal is structured like the others, the Saints should still have ample cap space to work with.
But how did they get here? To start, the Saints extended their contract with Brees, raising his 2020 salary cap hit from $15.9 million to $23.65 million. That’s an increase of $7.75 million, which was nearly accounted for in pay cuts for Alonso (from $8.7 million to $3.15 million) and Robinson (from $4.8 million to $3.45 million). Those two moves resulted in savings of $6.9 million, nearly breaking even on the costs of re-signing Brees.
So with Brees settled, the Saints turned their attentions to the restructures for Armstead and Thomas. They each converted significant portions of their 2020 base salaries into signing bonuses, which is not the same thing as a pay cut. When teams do this, the players get a big check now and raise their future salary cap hits, which gives them more security. The benefit for the team is that it grants them more spending room.
In this case, Armstead’s salary cap hit fell from $16 million to $8,356,260 per Nick Underhill of NewOrleans.Football. Likewise, Underhill reported that Thomas reduced his salary cap figure from $15 million to just $7 million. That’s a lump savings of $15,643,740.
But we can’t forget Onyemata’s contract extension, which will count for $3.5 million against the 2020 salary cap, per Underhill. While Onyemata’s salary cap hits in 2021 and 2022 will each elevate to $10 million (and he’ll leave behind $2.5 million in dead money in 2023), it’s a short-term boost for the Saints.
While we need the exact year-by-year figures on Jenkins’ free agent contract, for now it’s apparent that the Saints have enough funds to address their needs. And they can create more by extending the contracts of Janoris Jenkins (due $11.25 million against the cap), Sheldon Rankins ($7.69 million on his fifth-year option), or Taysom Hill ($4.641 million, on the first-round restricted free agent tender). They might also extend the contracts of veterans like Larry Warford (whose $12.875 million hit ranks second-highest behind Brees) or Jared Cook (accounting for $9 million in the final year of his deal).
So what does this tell us? The Saints are far from finishing doing business. Expect another busy day of roster moves.
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