Saints Blockbusters Have Had Surprising Twist

The Saints certainly haven't had a simple offseason...

Nov 5, 2023; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; Detailed view of the New Orleans Saints helmet on the team bench against the Chicago Bears during the first half at the Caesars Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Lew-Imagn Images / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

The New Orleans Saints are one of the more fascinating teams in the National Football League.

One of the reasons for this is because of the team's handling of the salary cap. New Orleans being in a negative cap situation is no surprise. When the 2024 season ended, there was a time in which the Saints were over -$51 million in cap space.

New Orleans restructured deals and figured it out -- as it seems to do each year. The Saints don't necessarily make it easy for themselves, though. As the offseason picked up, there was a lot of chatter about how New Orleans could cut ties with some players -- like Derek Carr or Cam Jordan -- to start actually fixing its cap issues rather than pushing off the issue for another year.

Well, that didn't happen.

The Saints have shown no signs that it wants to blow up the roster. New Orleans has spent the offseason limiting roster turnover and one way it did this was by re-signing Chase Young and Juwan Johnson.

One thing that was interesting about these two deals, though, was that they actually saved cash in 2025 for both players, as shared by ESPN's Ben Solak.

"I loved: Signing internal players," Solak said. "Both Young and Johnson had existing void years on their contracts, with dead money ready to accelerate onto the 2025 cap if they walked in free agency. By extending Young and backloading his deal, the Saints actually saved money against the 2025 cap. The same was true of Johnson: The savings were less, but the extension kept void money stuck in future cap years.

"It takes some grotesque salary cap chicanery to get to this stage of team-building, but the Saints were right to extend their already-voided players and get some cap relief."

The cap is complicated and the Saints clearly have a deep knowledge of it.

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