The New Orleans Saints are notorious for manipulating the cap to keep star players and accumulate money to sign more stars. But over the years, as the Saints became less competitive, their \u201ckicking the can down the road\u201d formula started to hurt a lot more than it helped.<\/p>\n
In 2025, New Orleans ate a bunch of dead money. While this stopped them from going out in free agency and making any big signings, it allowed them to enter the 2026 offseason just $12 million over the cap.<\/p>\n
And with just three moves, restructuring the contracts of Chase Young, Juwan Johnson, and Justin Reid, the Saints are under the cap.<\/p>\n
However their job is not done yet, and they will have to restructure more contracts to create enough cap space to spend in free agency. But this time around, the Saints will be able to target more free agents.<\/p>\n
This is a significant landmark for New Orleans. Not going all-in in 2025 gives them the chance to build upon their young roster in 2026. With anticipated moves, such as adding a running back and another wide receiver through free agency, this time of the year is back to being a fun experience for Saints fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Orleans Saints are notorious for manipulating the cap to keep star players and accumulate money to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,896,55,3578,401,12019,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-795329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-orleans","10":"tag-new-orleans-saints","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints-free-agency","12":"tag-new-orleans-saints-news","13":"tag-new-orleans-saints-salary-cap","14":"tag-neworleans","15":"tag-neworleanssaints","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116180437110095987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}