By Ross Jackson
Few teams navigate the salary like the New Orleans Saints.
However, contract restructures right before a season begins are becoming more and more prevalent. Opening up some late salary cap space prepares teams for the eventual post-Week 1 transactions that can be brought upon by injury or sheer interest.
Sometimes teams will hit the market again for a free agent after Week 1 has concluded because contracts become non-guaranteed at that point. Other teams just want to be ready in case of any emergency signings. The NFL, after all, is a league of attrition.
The Saints joined the flurry of Week 1 restructures on Wednesday. Per ESPN NFL Insider Field Yates, the team restructured tight end Juwan Johnson’s contract. The move opened up an additional $3.5 million in cap space.
Per Over the Cap, the team was sitting at just under $1.5 million available against the cap at the time of the move. (The site may be updated by the time you read this.) So this should put the Saints at just under $5 million now.
What New Orleans likely did to help make this happen was a simple restructure to Johnson’s deal. He had a $5.5 million base salary and already have five years (four void years) on his deal. So, by reducing his salary from $5.5 million to the veteran minimum $1.125 million and spreading that out over five years of proration, it would look like they could free up more than just $3.5 million.
The caveat is that he was already due $1 million due to a previous proration (signing bonus from his recent extension) and carried $2.5 million in guaranteed salary. So, no matter what they do to his base salary, the team would still be on the hook for a combined $3.5 million.
Therefore, what the team likely did was simply restructure the $3 million of non-guaranteed salary, therefore only kicking a small amount down the road and saving themselves the $3.5 million that was not guaranteed from his $7 million cap hit.
It’s a convoluted game, the salary cap. But the Saints are no strangers to working through it.
