The New Orleans Saints are no stranger to being in what's referred to as "cap hell". This is when teams are massively under the cap entering the offseason and somehow, someway, the Saints always manage to kick the can down the road and deal with it later on.
A lot of people thought that the Saints might finally rebuild and make the necessary moves to fix their cap situation last year. They went on to sign Derek Carr to a multi-year deal and make a slew of other moves.
Well, when the 2023 season had wrapped up, the Saints were 9-8, missed the playoffs, and found themselves with the worst cap situation. That's no longer the case after the Saints made some moves to help themselves out a bit. Teams were also rewarded due to the cap increasing to $255.4 million.
For teams in good positions, this is great news because they only get richer. For the Saints, it helps dig them out of a hole.
The NFL announced today that the 2024 Salary Cap will be $255.4 million per club, with an additional $74 million per club payment for player benefits, which includes Performance Based Pay and benefits for retired players.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) February 23, 2024
What is the Saints' cap situation like now?
As of this writing, New Orleans is no longer in the worst position when it comes to cap space. That honor now belongs to the Buffalo Bills, who are in the hole at -$41,742,609 compared to the Saints sitting at -$40,071,454. The Saints have made some moves, restructuring both Derek Carr's and Erik McCoy's contracts to help their situation.
The #Saints put a huge dent in their cap overage by converting $28.79M of Derek Carr's base salary into signing bonus.
— Spotrac (@spotrac) February 23, 2024
The move freed up $23.02M of space in 2024, but it raised his 2025 dead cap hit up to $50.13M when including a $10M bonus that guarantees in 3 weeks.
The Saints still aren't in a good spot at all with their salary cap but at least now there's one other team in a worst spot than they are. That's something, right?