Every offseason, NFL commentators and analysts look at the New Orleans Saints salary cap situation and come up with some variant of: “Well, I’d like to see the ole Saints wriggle their way out of THIS jam!”
And then the Saints front office pulls a couple of levers and makes a few restructures, wriggling their way out of that jam easily. Tens of millions of dollars in cap hits vanish into the ether, a metaphorical can kicked down the road — except the road is paying for the can.
That’s been New Orleans’ strategy for a decade with the always-rising salary cap, pushing accounting figures into future years and trusting more rises in the cap would follow to balance them out.