The New Orleans Saints have continued to work around the NFL salary cap, adding free agents at will and improving their team. Their recent signings include tight end Jared Cook and punt returner Marcus Sherels, so how much cap space do they have ahead of the 2019 NFL Draft?
There’s three public sources of finding how much salary cap space each team has to work with. But given how long it takes contract details to be reported (and then added to each outlet’s calculations), there’s going to be discrepancies. Here’s what we know on Friday, March 29:
- NFL Players Association: $10,489,162
- Over The Cap: $13,919,162
- Spotrac: $14,264,568
Thanks to recent reports, we know that Cook will count only $4 million against the salary cap and Sherels has a cap hit of just $735,000. There are still small discrepancies between the three different reports. The NFLPA public report does not show which contracts are included in their calculations. Over The Cap lists the cap hit for Sherels, but not Cook. Spotrac has blank spots on their chart table for both Sherels and Cook, though contract values are not yet listed.
We’ll run with the Over The Cap numbers because they have already facotred in the Sherels signing. Taking the $13,919,162 number and subtracting $4 million for Cook’s cap hit would lower it to $9,919162, but that would bump the lowest entry out of the calculations — a $570,000 cap hit for Dan Arnold. Remember, salary cap calculations only consider the 51 most-valuable contracts. So we’ll take Arnold’s hit out, giving the Saints $10,489,162 in salary cap space; exactly what the NFLPA reports.
That’s plenty to work with, whether they want to add a veteran defensive end like Ziggy Ansah (depending on his post-shoulder surgery checkup in mid-April) or add someone else. It also keeps them well in the clear for funds needed to sign rookie draft picks, which totals only about $3.5 million.
So the Saints have their salary cap situation well in hand. They’re sticking to the plan, so far.
