Saints wide receiver Cameron Meredith has agreed to a pay cut, reducing his base salary from $3.4MM to $1.3MM for 2019, as Field Yates of ESPN.com tweets. Meredith missed ten games due to a knee issue last season, so it was a logical move for both sides. 
With that, Meredith’s cap number will decrease from $6.45MM to $4.15M, creating additional cap room for New Orleans. This will, in part, help to offset the expense of adding tight end Jared Cook.
Meredith was not involved in the Saints’ offense outside of Weeks 3-5 last year, though he dressed in the weeks leading up to his injury. When he was on the field, Meredith had nine catches for 114 yards and a touchdown in total.
Meredith, 27 in September, exploded in 2016 with 66 catches for 888 yards and four touchdowns. He was primed for an even bigger 2017 with the Bears, but a torn ACL and MCL in the preseason wiped out the entire year. The Saints still saw plenty of upside in Meredith, however, and inked him to a two-year offer sheet as a restricted free agent.
Drew Brees tends to spread the ball around, but Meredith will have an opportunity to assert himself in one of the league’s most potent offenses in 2019. If he can stay healthy and produce, he’ll have an opportunity to cash in next March as an unrestricted free agent.
I don’t think he was an unrestricted free agent. He received the original round tender from the bears. But since he was undrafted it basically just Gave the bears the option to match any contract he signed. Regardless I believe he was classified as a restricted free agent.
Hindsight says Bears were smart in letting him go. People in Chicago were not happy with this move at the time.
I was. He got all of his catches in garbage time.
Some ignorant fans were upset I just thought they didn’t use the tender options to their best ability. They were willing to give an original round tender at almost 2mil to basically give them a right of refusal with him being undrafted. But for 1 mil more they could put the 2nd rd tender which would have basically meant no one would sign him as a team would never give up the 2nd pick to sign Cam. If they were willing to pay him 2 you think they would of just paid him 3 and guaranteed he stayed on the team. I just didn’t think it was handled the best way. In the end this move was small potatoes compared to everything else going on in the off-season. And in hindsight they are probably happy someone signed him.