Earlier today when talking about the Saints and their salary cap, our resident board owner asked:
Zero2Cool (10h) : What does NFL do if they're over cap?
NFL Top-51 Rule: What happens if an NFL team goes over the salary cap?
What are the punishments for breaching the NFL's salary cap?
The NFL's salary cap is established in the Collective Bargaining Agreement set between the league and NFLPA.
If a team goes over the salary cap, they are fined upwards of five million dollars for each violation of the cap. In more severe scenarios, draft picks can be confiscated entirely and player contracts can be voided.
Teams over the cap are also banned from signing any new players until they are back below the cap again.
This is why there is so much talk about salary caps in the NFL, because it really isn't worth it for a team to go over that limit
So what about the Saints?
Well...
This trade would clear a prorated portion of $1.21 million and the Saints would carry $13.4 million in dead money in 2024. Where this gets tricky for New Orleans is looking ahead to 2025. The team is currently projected to be $71,408,567 over the effective salary cap next year, per Over The Cap. If they trade Lattimore, they would lock in $31.66 million in dead money for 2025 because this is a post-June 1 trade. That means the dead money is split between the rest of this season and next season. (Dead money is cash already paid to a player that hasn’t been accounted for on the salary cap.)
The Saints already need to clear more than $71 million, and dead money is not something that can be cleared out once a player has been moved. If they trade Lattimore, they’re just further leveraging themselves against future years’ caps. They would in turn need to find more people to trade, cut, or otherwise renegotiate contracts to clear more cap space.
The Saints have long been part of a running joke about the salary cap not being entirely real given how much they have kicked the can on it. Theoretically they can keep kicking it, but we’re seeing the result of this strategy: they’re a mediocre to bad team that cannot afford to upgrade their roster because they’re too busy paying for the mediocrity that currently exists.
At some point, the Saints will have to hit the reset button and take the pain of rebuilding everything. It’s just a matter of when they’re willing to do it, and who gets to take the lumps during what will be some very lean years.
A cursory look at the
Saints salary cap at Over the Cap shows them at $61 million in the hole for next year (not sure about the discrepancy with the previous $71 million figure the Lattimore article states, esp since they also cite Over the Cap). Over the cap by $61/$71 million with 49 contracts on the books is...not good. It gets worse when you look and see that 3 players have void years for 2025. So the Saints need so shed 10s of millions of cap to get under and will also need to get up to 53 players on their roster,
most likely through the draft . As it currently stands, the Saints have a good shot at landing the top pick in draft. Even with the cap friendly rookie contracts, the Saints are in a bit of bind.
But hey at least they're in the black for 2026 with $23.5 million with 40 contracts on the books, right? Wellll....a closer examination shows 14 void year contracts, so in reality the Saints have a long way to go filling out their roster. And those numbers are subject to change as the current 2026 cap show has none of the 2025 or 2026 draft picks on the their books.
But surely 2027 is a good year! $209.6 million in cap space with only $104.3 in current cap hits with 28 contracts on the roster! WELLLLLLL.....17 of those contracts are void contracts. Similar to the previous year, the future draft classes aren't factored in and like the year previous, the Saints will have a long way to go in filling out their roster.
The big question is will the Saints let some of their talent (Olave, Ruiz etc) walk to get their cap healthy or will they use the cap expansion in 2027 to continue kicking the can?