The New Orleans Saints have long been a team that played fast and loose with the NFL salary cap. After years of pushing the ball down the line in the chase for a Super Bowl ring, they now find themselves caught in the proverbial Salary Cap hell and staring down the barrel of what could be a brutal rebuild. Newly signed head coach Kellen Moore proved he was a winner as the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive coordinator, but he will have his work cut out for him in New Orleans.
The Last Dance Timeline
Desperate Times
The Saints boast a shiny new head coach to steer the ship in 2025 and that could prompt management to roll the dice for one last playoff run before what’s left of their window is fully closed. While a promising coach is a great start, they are going to need to find a way to navigate around almost no salary cap space as well as one of the worst quarterback contracts in the league that sees the middling Derek Carr making $150,000,000 over four years.
Carr is halfway through that four-year deal, and Spotrac has 2025 listed as a potential out of the year, but with a dead cap hit of $51,458,000 for this season alone it seems highly unlikely. The Saints own the Ninth overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, but a first-round quarterback isn’t the route they are likely to take. Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders are the only true standouts at quarterback and both figures to be selected well before the Saints are on the clock, and with the Saint’s limited options, a trade-up for either would be no easy feat.
The Saints boast a quarterback room featuring Spencer Rattler, Jake Haener, and Ben DiNucci as other potential options and since none of them is an upgrade from Carr, it stands to reason that he will be the Week 1 starter.
New Orleans is being further hampered by the dead cap hits of Marshon Lattimore (traded to Washington), Jameis Winston (now with Cleveland), and Michael Thomas (retired), totaling just under $50,000,000 in 2025, which further limits their options to build a win-now squad in 2025.
Desperate Measures
The team’s current state of affairs makes this scenario the least likely to be successful, but if Mickey Loomis is truly on the hot seat, he may opt to roll the dice in an attempt to save his job. If he hopes to build a contender with limited cap space and a shallow roster, he will need to be creative with the salary cap as he has in years past.
Loomis has been willing to push salary cap issues far down the line and may be willing to do so once again in 2025, but make no mistake, if he chooses this multiverse it could be one of despair for Saints fans for many years to come. More than one of the New Orleans Saint’s larger contracts would need to defer money to allow them a shot to sign big-name free agents which could help keep them in the mix in a weak division but would make the future even more grim.
For this option to be successful they are also going to need to get lucky in more than one way. No matter how much magic Loomis can pull out of his bag concerning the salary cap, he isn’t going to be able to buy a contender. The Saints are also going to need to develop some of the younger players on their current roster such as Rashid Shaheed and Kendre Miller and will ultimately need Day 1 contributions from every player they draft in the 2025 NFL Draft.
The other possibility here is for the Saints to mortgage the future once again and say “F them picks”. This would not only be irresponsible and foolish but inexplicable, but if the seat gets hot enough you can never rule out anything from the Saints front office.
Half-Measures Timeline
Oil of Olave
New Orleans struggled mightily on offense last season and with limited star power, it would be in their best interest to keep the stars they already have on the roster and attempt to supplement those stars with rookies from the draft. The Saints will have to make sure they lock up the talent they do have to ensure a solid foundation for a reboot as opposed to a rebuild.
The first player that this applies to is elite receiver Chris Olave. Olave enters the fourth and final year of his team-friendly rookie deal in which the Saints are all but guaranteed to exercise his fifth-year option for 2026, but nowadays it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see him holdout during training camp to get a much more lucrative deal locked down this season.
Regardless of how the Saints proceed, they are certain to make sure they hold the leverage on Olave if for no other reason than having a trade deadline chip. General manager Mickey Loomis has to ensure he has a happy and healthy Olave ready to go for Week 1 of the season if Kellen Moore hopes to have a fighting chance.
Olave and rookie phenom Rashid Shaheed formed a solid 1-2 punch in 2024 before Shaheed suffered a season-ending injury. That duo in combination with the dual-threat superstar Alvin Kamara will give the Saints a solid offensive foundation to build on.
An Aging Superstar
It seems like it has been an eternity since Alvin Kamara exploded into the Saints backfield in 2018, but the former third-round pick has been among the league’s most reliable over that time.
Two years ago, it appeared that the writing was on the wall for Kamara as he rapidly approached the age cliff. Injuries and decreasing skills, combined with the addition of rookie Kendre Miller looked to spell the end of an era for the veteran star, but entering the 2025 season, Kamara seems to be the only legit threat in the New Orleans rushing game. Miller has been unable to stay healthy and despite his $10,000,000 salary cap hit for this season, Kamara needs to remain a key player for this offense.
Kamara rebounded to his early-career form in 2024 and looked every bit capable of carrying the load for another year. It may be a fool’s errand to keep a 29-year-old running back on a high-cost deal, but the Saints are unlikely to find a more capable back unless they strike gold at the draft, which is no easy task.
Getting Defensive
The once vaunted Saints defense became a black hole in 2024 and saw what they once regarded as their defensive centre-piece Marshon Lattimore, traded to the Commanders.
As if losing their most talented player in the secondary wasn’t bad enough they stand to lose one, if not both of their defensive line stars. Chase Young is a free agent and while the Saints have indicated they wish to keep him, their financial constraints could make that a tall task. Future Hall of Famer Cameron Jordan rounds out a trio of potential issues on defense, as his hefty contract and advancing age make him a possible cut candidate. He has been the face of the Saint’s defense and has indicated he wishes to retire in New Orleans, but a pay cut may be in store for Jordan to retire as a New Orleans Saint.
Reboot Not Rebuild
If the Saints hope to reboot and continue, they are going to need to dump the majority of their salary cap space and draft capital into securing a halfway decent defensive unit. This is a paradox as the offense as it currently sits is not good enough to be considered a contender.
The biggest drawback to this reboot on-the-fly approach is that the Saints are in desperate need of an infusion of talent on both sides of the ball and with no cap space to spend they will need to milk the last remaining production out of their aging veterans on both offense and defense.
This puts them in a situation where a steep decline from any of the players they are counting on would leave them dead in the water. This is particularly concerning on a team whose best players are Derek Carr, Alvin Kamara, and Cameron Jordan, all of whom could decline at any moment.
The only safe options for the Saints are in their receiving corps, which is the most likely place to build around through the draft. New Orleans will need everything to go exactly right for this multiverse to lead to a playoff berth and will need career years out of every player on their roster.
Full-Rebuild Timeline
A New Day on the Horizon
The list of players on the current Saints roster who may not be there come season’s end is a long one on both sides of the ball. Carr, Olave, and Kamara were the headliners of uncertainty but Taysom Hill, Juwan Johnson, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling could also be on the move.
The defensive side of the ball isn’t just in danger of losing Young and Jordan as they could also see veteran Willie Gay moved out of town sooner rather than later.
The Saints enter the 2025 season desperate for not only the quarterback and running backs of the future but for a wide receiver to go alongside Olave and potential breakout Rashid Shaheed. Add in a defensive unit that is void of high-end talent and the Saints need all the help they can get. They have almost no cap space as their cap space ranks last in the NFL which will make an impact player impossible to acquire through free agency a near impossibility.
Old-Fashioned Rebuild
The Saints are going to have to do things the old-fashioned way and rebuild this roster through the draft. Their draft record over the past few seasons has been spotty at best with more misses than hits.
According to Tankathon, the Saints hold four picks in the first three rounds of this year’s draft, acquiring the fourth pick through the Lattimore deal. These four picks are going to be some of the most crucial picks in the Mickey Loomis era. Their four picks in the top three rounds and six picks in the top 150 overall will be make-or-break picks. They are going to need to get Year One contributions from at least three of those six players if they hope to avoid the Number One pick in next year’s draft.
On the other hand, an outright tank job in 2025 could land them some much-needed draft capital and salary cap space for 2026 and could help to jump-start the Saint’s rebuild. Tanking may make the 2025 season painful for New Orleans Saints fans, but enduring short-term struggles could be the key to preventing years of hardship.
Mickey Loomis is the only man who can tell you which path the Saints will take, the only certain thing is that a massive roster shakeup is in the team’s immediate future.
