The New Orleans Saints have started their annual process of clearing out cap space. The team received a little help from the league with a record $279.2 million salary cap for the 2025 season, but that still left the Saints more than $40 million over the cap. They’re working to get that number down, though.
On Wednesday, the team restructured the contract of veteran center Erik McCoy. The restructure freed up just over $7 million in cap space for the 2025 season, leaving New Orleans $39.5 million over the cap. With the new league year starting on March 12, the team has a lot more work to do to clear the other 39.5 million dollars.
McCoy’s restructure will clear more than $7 million in cap space for the Saints, according to a source. https://t.co/tIatApBMrY
— Nick Underhill (@nick_underhill) March 6, 2025
Saints restructure Erik McCoy’s contract
McCoy was one of the obvious restructures on the books for New Orleans. The veteran center is coming off of back-to-back Pro Bowl seasons, and should be around in New Orleans for several more years. He has three years left on his current deal, so it was easy to move some money around and lower his cap number for this season.
The Saints won’t have many more easy restructures like that, though. The majority of the team’s cap space is tied up in high-paid veteran players near the end of their careers. New Orleans doesn’t seem like it plans to cut any of those veterans, and it’s also unlikely they take pay cuts. With the team also not wanting to extend them, it’s unclear how exactly the Saints will clear out the rest of the cap space.
One thing for certain, they’ll figure it out. This is, unfortunately, commonplace in New Orleans. Every offseason, it seems like the team doesn’t have a path to becoming a cap-compliant team, but they always figure it out. With Mickey Loomis saying he wants to be more active in free agency this offseason, the team will have to work even harder as they clear out enough space to make moves.
It’ll be interesting to see what other maneuvers are made in the coming days, as the Saints try to clear out cap space without comprising future years.