Saints facing Super Bowl or bust season with salary cap hell looming

A lower NFL salary cap in 2021 will hurt every team to some degree, but the New Orleans Saints are clearly in Super Bowl or bust mode for this year.

Retirement speculation trails New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees every offseason, as it may tend to as he has approached and now crossed into his 40’s. He now has a contract to work for NBC awaiting him when he does decide to call it a career.

The Saints are routinely up against the salary cap, with proverbial financial cans kicked down the road at times and occasional tough decisions to keep or cut players. The NFL is not immune to the financial climate in the world right now, which makes it a virtual certainty the salary cap will drop next year. Barring a reversal in recent momentum, the Saints will add a new contract for running back Alvin Kamara to their future financial bill soon.

The New Orleans Saints are facing win-now mode with a disastrous salary cap situation facing the organization after this season

If the salary cap drops to a widely rumored $175 million for 2021, all 32 NFL teams will have some tough decisions to make in order to get in line. There is one team in worse shape than the Saints, the Philadelphia Eagles, but that team has a different situation with a younger quarterback in place.

The $78 million the Saints would be over a $175 million cap does not include any cap number for Kamara’s looming contract extension. It does include a $36.15 million 2021 cap hit for Brees, which would become $22.65 million in dead money if he retires. That $13.5 million difference is really a drop in the cap constraint bucket for the Saints if Brees were to retire after this season.

With even the hint of the idea Brees is entering his final season, the Saints are in win-now mode for 2020. A look at the cap hell they have coming in 2021 only confirms it’s Super Bowl or bust this year.