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Originally Posted by Sainters7
Haha yeah, I didn't want to copy & paste it because its a paid site and he's just starting up after going rogue, but the GOAT of Saints writers Nick Underhill released an article this week breaking down the roster explicitly one by one and where they can save money, they can basically put themselves in a situation where they could even have as much as $20 million in cap room. I'm telling ya Loomis is a freakin wizard, the cap isn't real in NOLA lol.
Its definitely going to bite them eventually and their D will take a hit in UFA, but the national writers acting like this is judgement day for the Saints are misinformed as to how well Loomis manipulates contracts down there. Between that and how aggressive they are, I'm not at all surprised they're in the Watson sweepstakes, despite how ridiculous that seems with their cap situation. Could even be a big roster style trade, like when they got rid of Jimmy Graham. Saints are seriously lacking in draft capital, but have plenty of capital in the way of impact players in their prime.
Now by no means do I think they'll land him, but I'm not surprised to see them in the running.
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It's not really wizardry. It's just basic restructuring/extending and kicking the can down the road to a future date. Roseman has been doing it with the Eagles for years.
It's not a big deal if you draft well and have good core of players locked in. The problem comes when those players age/decline and there's nothing waiting in the pipeline because it can be hard to jettison those players to get significant relief.
Eventually you have to take your lumps and do a rebuild or at least retool where you're not going to be competitive for a couple of years, but as long as you have a decent window open, it's not super difficult to maneuver.
The big problem for teams like the Eagles and Rams is they bet on the wrong players and (in the Eagles' case) have drafted poorly/failed to develop their younger players.
But yeah, playing around with the calculator on OTC, I can get the Saints under the cap by about $15M-20M. You lose some key contributors in the process but they aren't of the irreplaceable variety.
EDIT: That said, if you're bringing in Watson, the draft capital required to grab him means you basically have no margin for error in the draft or you become the Eagles 3 years from now.