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It won’t surprise anyone that the New Orleans Saints are strapped for cash and draft picks in 2020. The team’s strategy of maximizing their resources has created a cycle of spending future assets to win now, and it’s resulted in the best three-year stretch in Saints history.
So expect that to continue this offseason. The Saints will not hesitate to trade next year’s draft picks to move up and target a prospect they really believe in, and they’re also willing to get creative in contract structures to fit everyone in beneath the salary cap. The situations in each area are going to change whenever the new NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement is ratified and once this year’s compensatory draft picks are awarded, so don’t look at these numbers as more than well-educated guesses. But where do the Saints stand right now?
We’ll start with the salary cap. The analysts at Over The Cap are working with an estimated 2020 salary cap of $200 million, which has the Saints with just under $9.4 million in cap space. That ranks sixth-lowest around the league, but at least the Saints aren’t starting out in the red this year. However, Over The Cap also lists the Saints with 56 players under contract, which reflects the voided deals with Drew Brees, Teddy Bridgewater, and A.J. Klein; while each of their contracts are up in March, their contracts are technically still on the books. Those three players are the difference between tying for the 10th-fewest players signed for 2020 and the 14th-most, which reflects where teams stand right now in filling out their 90-man offseason rosters.
What about the draft? Tankathon has put together a cumulative value of each team’s current picks, based off the Jimmy Johnson model, and the Saints sit close to the bottom of the pack. That’s because they’ve already traded their 2020 second-round pick (as part of a package that netted starting center Erik McCoy and versatile safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson) and their seventh-round pick (for cornerback Eli Apple, a former starter headed for free agency).
The 2020 Saints draft class currently has a total value of 992.4, which ranks sixth-worst in the NFL. Their only selections in the top 100 will come at Nos. 24 and 88, and their three remaining picks will be pushed back once compensatory draft picks are allotted. Naturally, the established, aggressive Saints draft strategy of trading up means they’ll probably try to make a move on draft day.
So, to recap: for now, the Saints rank sixth-worst in both projected 2020 salary cap space and in draft pick value. But as we’ve seen before, that probably won’t be a big hurdle for Saints coach Sean Payton, general manager Mickey Loomis, and their staff. It’s shaping up for another fascinating offseason in New Orleans.
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