Heading into the 2025 off-season, the New Orleans Saints were reportedly $64+ million over the NFL salary cap. According to the alarmists online, the Saints were in “cap hell.”

If you listened to all the speculation and kerfuffles on social media, you would’ve believed that the Saints would eventually be forced to cut several of their best players, they would most certainly lose all of their free agents, and they would be unable to sign any new free agents.

However, that’s not what has happened. In fact, we’ve actually seen them spend some serious cash.

 

So, No Cap Hell?

The New Orleans Saints, who were supposedly in “cap hell” (meaning, they’d be severely handicapped and limited by their lack of salary cap space), were somehow able to keep all their core players and, in addition to that, handed out two substantial $30+ million contracts to two different players.

The Saints signed highly regarded free-agent safety Justin Reid, from the Chiefs, to a three-year, $31.5 million deal, which includes $22.25 million of fully guaranteed money.

They also re-signed two of their own free-agents, defensive end Chase Young and tight end Juwan Johnson. The Saints gave Young a three-year, $57 million deal and Johnson inked a three-year, $30.75 million deal. Big deals for a team supposedly in “cap hell.”

But how did they pull this off? Teams that are over the cap supposedly can’t sign players, right?

How did the Saints side-step the treacherous and inescapable claws of the NFL salary cap? (Do you sense my sarcasm?!?)

Friends, there is no such thing as “cap hell!”

 

Converting Salary to Bonuses

There’s several salary cap maneuvers that NFL teams can utilize to create cap space. The most efficient maneuver is to convert base salaries into bonus monies.

Base salaries fully count against the salary cap in the season in which they are paid, while signing bonuses can be paid and then stretched out over a five year period (using the “dummy years tactic“). The Saints were able to clear enough cap charges by doing this with several players before the start of the 2025 league year, most notably with quarterback Derek Carr.

 

Let’s Get it Done Carr!

Derek Carr’s original contract, signed in March 2023, was $150 million over four seasons. The Saints actually restructured that deal in March 2024, just 12 months after Carr signed it.

As of March 2024, after the initial restructure, the last three years of Carr’s contract looked like this:

 

 

Fast-forward to early March 2025. The Saints were again seeking to free up cap space.

Heading into the 2025 season, Carr’s cap hit was slated to be $51.458 million, including a $30 million base salary. They elected to convert a big portion of Carr’s 2025 base salary into signing bonus. They converted $28.745 million of that $30 million base salary, driving the base salary down to $1.255 million for 2025.

The Saints will then prorate that $28.745 million over the next five years, again using the dummy years tactic.

Since there are now only two real years left in the contract (2025 and 2026), the last three years of money allocations will count as dead money.

Meaning, one-fifth of the $28.745 million (i.e., $5.749 million) will count against the 2025 cap, an additional one-fifth (again, $5.749 million) will count against the 2026 salary cap, and the final three-fifths (i.e., $17.247 million) will count against the 2027 salary cap as “dead money.”

 

And the Roster Bonus Too

In addition to his base salary, Carr was also owed a $10 million roster bonus, due in mid-March. This bonus was fully guaranteed and was slated to count against the salary cap in 2025.

As part of this restructuring, the Saints also converted the roster bonus into a signing bonus, and will prorate the $10 million over the course of the next five seasons, with the last three years counting as dead money in 2027.

(Side Note: Two years ago, back in 2023, when Carr signed the original deal, I predicted that the Saints would convert this roster bonus into a signing bonus).

Now, only one-fifth of the roster bonus (i.e., $2 million) will count against the 2025 salary cap, instead of the entire amount. Also, an additional one-fifth (again, $2 million) will count against the cap in 2026, and then the last three-fifths (i.e., $6 million) will count against the 2027 cap as “dead money.”

Carr’s 2025 salary cap hit has been brought down from $51.458 million to $20.462 million, that’s $30.996 million in salary cap savings.

The newly restructured contract looks like this:

 

 

Yes, The Cap is Fake

By the end of the 2025 season, the New Orleans Saints would have paid Derek Carr $100 million. Those are real American dollars.

And yet, by the end of 2025, he would’ve only counted for a grand total of $40.33 million against the salary cap over those three seasons ($7.2 million is 2023, $12.668 million in 2024, and $20.462 million in 2025).

This is the reason why I (and others) assert that the cap is fake. In theory, the salary cap was crafted to limit how much money any one team can spend in any given league year. But if only 40% of the team’s spendings actually count against the cap, then the cap isn’t actually capping anything, is it?

 

They’re Just ‘Kicking the Can’, Eventually It’ll Come Due, Right?

People ask, “But aren’t the Saints just kicking the can down the road?” Well, yes, that’s exactly what they’re doing. That’s my point. But, here’s the thing, NFL teams can do that indefinitely, with impunity.

People respond, “Well, eventually the bill will come due, right?” But that’s the thing, no it won’t come due. There’s actually no mechanism in the CBA or the NFL accounting protocols that will ever force this supposed “due date.”

NFL teams can, conceivably, use this conversion maneuver every single season, and they can continually push monies into the future. Teams can perpetually use a big chunk of their salary cap space in future seasons to account for monies they are paying to players in this current season.

Teams can indeed “kick the can down the road.” And then, when they actually get “down the road” in a few seasons, they’ll just “kick the can” again. There’s nothing actually stopping them from doing this over and over again. So, in reality, there’s no actual cap to spending.

 

2025 Will Be Carr’s Last Year in New Orleans

Important Caveat: Carr is slated to make $50 million base salary in 2026, which is not guaranteed.

Unless Carr has an absolutely fantastic 2025 campaign, it feels highly unlikely that the Saints will want to keep him on the roster at that $50 million number.

The Saints could cut Carr after the 2025 season and they’d take a $59.67 million dead money hit against the cap. But that would actually be $9.537 million in cap savings and, more importantly, $50 million is real dollars.

The Saints could also elect to designate Carr as a “post-June 1 cut” and they’d be able to spilt the $59.67 million dead money cap hit over two seasons (2026 and 2027) rather than taking the entire hit in just 2026. Either way, I find it hard to believe that the Saints will pay Carr $50 million in real dollars in 2026.

 

Other Restructures and Free Agents

The Saints did similar contract restructurings with safety Tyrann Mathieu, center Erik McCoy, and linebacker Pete Werner, saving the Saints millions of dollars against the 2025 cap.

The Saints were able to adjust base salary monies, converting them into bonuses, and adjusted (i.e., manipulated) in which league fiscal year those monies would be officially accounted for; and they were able to do so with very little friction.

With the newly created cap space, the Saints were able to sign free-agent safety Justin Reid and re-sign tight end Juwan Johnson (both players signed three-year deals with substantial chunks of guaranteed money).

The Saints will reportedly now have more than $18 million in salary cap space as they head into the new league year.

 

Kellen Moore Says He Wanted Carr

There was speculation that new Saints head coach Kellen Moore wanted to move on from Derek Carr. There was talk that the Saints would seek to acquire a different quarterback. But later reports came out that Moore actually was okay with keeping Carr.

The most reliable beat-writers seem to think that the Saints did indeed inquire around the league about the possibility of acquiring another quarterback, but apparently they didn’t have a whole lot of good options, so they’ve chosen to stick with Carr for 2025.

As previously mentioned, the finances make it unlikely that Carr will be back with the Saints in 2026.

 

Conclusion

If teams want to keep a player, then they can make it happen. The cap is easily manipulated, so much so that it seems to me that the cap is useless.

The cap is merely a speed bump in the pathway of any NFL team wanting to spend money. This is why I continually say, “The cap is fake!” And the Saints keep proving me right, over and over again.