Why Saints restructured Carr’s contract despite injury

By Ross Jackson

With the news of starting quarterback Derek Carr’s injury jeopardizing his availability for the 2025 NFL season, questions are plentiful as to why the New Orleans Saints chose to restructure his contract if they knew about the injury.

The answer may be as simple as they had no choice.

When the Saints restructured Carr’s deal ahead of the new league year, not only did it tie the quarterback and team together for 2025, it guaranteed him $40 million.

Per NewOrleans.Football’s Nick Underhill, the Saints have both known about and been in conversation around the injury situation for “some time.” Assuming the team knew before making the contract decision, it begs the question: why commit more guaranteed money to a hurt player, especially one that reportedly was willing to test other options.

Carr may have been willing to test the market, but the threat of the shoulder injury and what it could mean for his availability was indeed in question. However, the outlook may have been more optimistic at the time. For instance, the possibility of surgery may be more recent information than the actual injury itself and it may be the injury that jeopardizes the season for the quarterback, with the ailment being to his throwing shoulder.

After not being able to move Carr because of the injury, the Saints may have been limited in their next options which included:

• Restructuring Carr to save roughly $30 million immediately, helping them build their roster.
• Cutting Carr immediately, which on its face would have saved roughly $1 million of salary cap for 2025, but simultaneously would have put $50 million on the team’s plate right away.

One of those options is doable while the other option would have made it remarkably challenging to get under the salary cap for this year. 

New Orleans did go on to open up an additional $30+ million of surplus. And while that may appear to have been possible to allow them to move on from Carr ahead of the new league year, it’s not so simple. A portion of that spending money was opened by re-signing players that first tested the market, meaning that the team would not have reached compliance in time.

The only other option the Saints would have had was to convince Carr to take a pay cut. That was not going to happen.

That left the Saints with only one real possibility since the injury may have been the limiting factor in moving him to the different situation he pursued. That option was to restructure his contract and hope that his injury allowed him to get back out on the first for the team in 2025. That is unlikely, but still a possibility, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.

From The Insiders on @NFLNetwork: The #Saints now have a major QB question thanks to Derek Carr’s shoulder injury. pic.twitter.com/0set0CmlAb

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) April 11, 2025

It sounds more like the Saints are simply forced to swallow a tough pill this offseason with an eye now set towards a new beginning.