2024 Worst Salary Cap Situations and Solutions
The NFL Salary cap is unlike any other beast in professional sports. It's truly what makes the NFL the greatest league in the world in that it creates unparallelled parity. Every team only has so much money they can spend toward that cap every year, and there isn't a luxury tax, an apron, or a wink and nod agreement - it's a hard cap. Nobody can go over that number, not even by a penny, and it creates a league where you have to run your organization correctly or be forced to feel those negative decisions for years. Some teams can work around the salary cap at almost comical levels ala the Saints, and others run theirs like a tight ship, such as the Bengals. While there are 32 ways to manipulate the salary cap, everyone plays by the same rules, keep your team under the limit no matter what.
In 2024 and beyond the NFL is going to see incredible increases in the salary cap number. Some of this is due to CBA rules but most is due to the new TV deals that were secured by the league. The exponential increases in the cap are going to create massive contract extensions for people and free agents are likely to see contracts that dwarf what their contemporary and equivalent free agents received just a few seasons before. With an exploding cap, good roster management should create multiple avenues in roster formation that weren't available before. It should also make manipulating the cap for teams with bad cap situations easier than it's ever been.
In thinking about that, let's look at the teams with the worst 2024 salary cap situations and explain how they can crawl out of the hole that they've dug themselves.
32. NEW ORLEANS SAINTS ($89.8 Million)
Well we've all seen this song and dance before. The Saints have thought they had a better roster than they have for about a decade now and it's lead to them kicking the can down the road constantly. Now their roster is below average, aging, and with fewer and fewer cans to kick. The question isn't can they get out of this hole (they can) the question should be do they blow the entire roster up and start over (they should).
The Saints simply do not have an impressive roster anymore. Let's take a look at where it went wrong.
The heavily invested in offensive line was overpaid constantly by extending mediocre players with massive contracts.
* Cesar Ruiz - a guy who BT53 ranks as a below average starter - 4 year 44 million extension with $27.3m guaranteed
* Andrus Peat - a below average player with a lot of positional versatility - 5 years 57.5 million with 33.85 million guaranteed
They also spent heavy draft capital in round 1 on their OL with Ruiz getting drafted in round 1, Ramcyzk getting drafted in round 1, Peat getting drafted in round one, and then them going with Trevor Penning in round 1. Eric McCoy was taken in the second round.
Ruiz, Peat, and Penning are all below average NFL offensive lineman with Penning looking like a total bust.
Investing in your offensive line is typically a smart way to build an offense and a roster. However, using that much capital for your OL should make it the best in the NFL, New Orleans has an extremely expensive and capital heavy offensive line, but not a good one.
They paid non-premium positions premium money.
When going through and building a roster there are many positions that are deemed non-premium. Those would be guards, running backs, and off-ball linebackers first. You can debate the safety and tight end position as well but still. The 3 least important in terms of positional WAR are RB, LB, and then guard. They are the easiest positions to replace for the lowest cost - TE is similar. The Saints poured HUGE resources into those spots. Not only did they use 1st round picks on Peat (who converted to guard) and Ruiz like we had mentioned. They paid massive sums to Alvin Kamara, Taysom Hill, and Demario Davis.
Davis is an elite linebacker. There is zero question about that and the Saints paid him as such, with Davis accounting for a massive $18m cap number next season with already almost $7m in dead money in 2025. Taysom Hill is a jack of all trades who as a hybrid has an almost $16m cap hit in 2024 at the age of 34. Alvin Kamara at running back carries an almost $19m cap hit. If you combine those guys with Peat's ALREADY dead cap hit of $13.6m and Ruiz getting a $10.8 million cap hit. You have a whopping $77 million between your guards, rb, te, and off ball LB.
Davis is going to be 35, Hill 34, Kamara 29, and Peat a free agent.
Their extensions have come back to bite them with dead cap money
In order to try to keep a competitive team, teams can opt to create restructuring bonuses or signing bonuses into the contract to pay players now and essentially convert non-guaranteed money into guaranteed money. It allows them to push cap dollars into the future. However, when teams do that constantly it typically ends up eventually leading to an aging team with a lot of dead cap on its books. The Saints were the poster child for this approach. Their dead cap hits for 2024 are interesting to say th least:
Andrus Peat $13.6m
Jameis Winston $10.7m
James Hurts 3.5m
This isn't brutal by any stretch but it's about $28m in dead cap or expiring contracts that they are dealing with.
It also means it has a very old roster that are getting paid like they are in their prime. Cameron Jordan is getting paid 23.3m at age 34. Davis, Hill, and Kamara are very old for their positions. Tyrrann Mathieu is playing well still but commands a $12m cap hit going into his age 32 season.
ALL OF THIS LEADS TO A TEAM THAT HAS A HUGE CAP ISSUE
The Saints top of its cap situation is out of control. The team needs to create some cap space immediately, but there aren't a ton of good options on this roster to do so. The players that are easiest to restructure are old. There are only a handful of young good players on the team, so how do you make this work? The dead cap for cutting almost any player is equivalent to the cap hit, so they'd save virtually no money. This is all leading to a situation with a very bad team devoid of talent. If I'm an NFL GM and I can trade back for Saints picks in 2025 and 2026, we may have a chance at VERY high picks in the rounds due to the fact this will blow up at some point.
Cutting any off this teams top 10 cap hits in 2024 would get you at least a $10m dead cap carry. The next 4 players each carry a dead cap hit of over $8.4m Essentially the ONLY thing you can do is kick this can down the road. They are going to eventually be doomed with this strategy.
Getting this team cap compliant isn't that hard though.
Derek Carr you can essentially give him a $28m conversion of base salary to free up a massive amount of cap space. If it were me I'd do about $24m conversion and save that in cap space, creating an additional $8m cap hit each of the next 3 seasons, including one void year. While I don't want to commit that long to Carr who has looked like a below average starter in 2023, we are out of options.
(SAVING $24M)
Ryan Ramcyzk has a 17m base salary and two more seasons with a void year on his deal. Converting $15m in base salary to restructure bonus and adding $5m per season onto his deal is the ONLY option. His cap hits are outrageous but despite a good not great season, he's still a top 5-7 RT in the NFL. Saving $15m this season is nice, this one is the most palatable of all my suggestions and it will lead to Ramcyzk having $30m cap hits at RT. Again this organization bungled so many of these things.
(SAVING $15M)
Marshon Lattimore is still rolling here and playing good football and is still in his prime. He's another easy extension candidate. The issue here is that he misses a lot of football first and foremost and secondly his cap hits are outrageous for a corner, totaling over $82 million for the next 3 seasons combined. However, when trying to make this work, extending and restructuring younger players is just a better utlization of cap resources. With a $15m base in 2024, kicking $12 million of that over the next 2 seasons and a dead cap year is an easy fix.
(SAVING $12M)
Eric McCoy is a very good center and he's squarely in his prime. He's a top 5 center in the NFL and is a centerpiece this team should build around. His base salary is an easy to swallow 9.6 million with 3 more years on his deal so swapping $7.8 million into an additional $2.6 million per season over the next 3 years is nothing and an easy accounting move that frees up a bit of cash.
(SAVING $7.8M)
So far we've done the 4 easy moves here, freeing up a simple $58.8 million without hamstringing ourselves.
The rest of this isn't nearly as fun though. We still have a few restructures we're going to have to do with players that are old, and the money will almost assuredly come through as simply dead cap only.
Demario Davis is still playing at a high level but continuing to pay an off ball linebacker this much money is a very tough pill to swallow. However, you don't have many fun choices so let's lower his $18m cap number. With him let's not fully restructure though and give him a de facto extension for 3 seasons. This would allow us to spread his cap hit out farther and give him more guaranteed money. I would then convert $10m of his base into 8.5 million of signing bonus for the new deal, while giving us some more flexiblity into the future - this wouldn't be a smart accounting move typically but what's the alternative.
(SAVING $8.5M)
Alvin Kamara is another guy where we simply don't have a choice other than to give him a defacto extension. I'd offer him a one year $15m extension on top of what he has now and give him $12m fully guaranteed. This would allow me to move $8.5 million more of his base this year and then gives him an extra $3.5 million in 2025 guaranteed that we'd convert the 2025 cap money on it. It's not good business but frees up some money and he's still playing at a good if not great level.
(SAVING $8.5M)
One more crack at this for Taysom Hill is a similar idea with his extension into 2026 at $15m with all of it but $3m fully guaranteed. This lets our accounting go further into the future. I'd convert $8.5m of base salary into a signing bonus. Create $3.5m of his base in 2025 as a signing bonus for then as a fully guaranteed roster bonus and it kicks the can down the road.
(SAVING $8.5M)
Last one with Tyrann Mathieu getting a 2 year extension on paper where you add essentially $10m in fully guaranteed money to his deal including $5.7m up front this year in terms of a restructure.
(SAVING $5.7M)
If you add all of these deals up - we are now cap compliant and running back out there with the same mediocre team we had this season. In order to sign the draft picks there will need to be more moves, like restructuring Marcus Maye, Nathan Sheperd, and probably Juwan Johnson.
As you can see it's not difficult to get cap compliant, but an owner has to constantly guarantee more money to guys. How do they re-sign good draft picks? How do they bring in free agents? The ONLY way for the Saints to improve is simply to draft at an elite level and that's all. The dead cap hits when these guys eventually retire is going to undercut the Saints to a point where they may not be able to field a roster with anything competent. The team needs to try to accumulate about 13-14 picks per draft the next two years by constantly trading back, something they haven't done to this point. They also don't have the money to re-sign any of their own free agents. The only saving Grace New Orleans has is a rapidly rising cap. They are stuck in purgatory or worse for the next few seasons.
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