The Saints continue to methodically move down toward the NFL’s projected salary cap. While they have a long way to go, the team made another move Friday afternoon on the path toward cap compliance ahead of the 2021 league year.
New Orleans will restructure Wil Lutz‘s contract, per Ian Rapoport of NFL.com (on Twitter). This move will create $1.74MM in cap space for the team. Lutz is attached to a five-year, $20.25MM extension he signed in March 2019. The five-year Saints kicker is signed through the 2023 season.
Many more moves will be required over the next week and change. The Saints entered Friday just more than $60MM over the $180MM mark that represents the floor for the 2021 salary cap. They have begun doing work to clear space, though the lion’s share of this process has yet to transpire.
The Saints released veterans Thomas Morstead and Josh Hill this week and restructured David Onyemata‘s contract. Along with Friday’s Lutz restructure, this work week’s round of moves created upwards of $11MM in cap space. The team still has the most work to do on the cap front of any NFL team as the 2020 league year winds down.
It boggles my mind that the Saints always sit at or near the cap but manage to bring it down so much. They have been, for the last few years at least I think, above the cap and manage to bring it down a solid amount but still have very solid players. This ownership knows how to handle the bucks
It truly is amazing.
Well. It comes due at some point and that point is now. They still have $60M+ to create by next week and that is before they add or draft players. They can do it, but they will lose talent this year. A couple moves are gonna hurt.
They need to rip the bandaid off. This is not going to help them. They have kicked the can down the road as far as it can go. The harsh moves are still to come.