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I’ve become convinced by the actions of both the Bucs and the Saints that the restrictions of the cap are not nearly as debilitating as we’ve been led to believe for the last 20 years.
The multiple player contracts with multiple voidable years in order to create cap space has never been used to this extreme previously. It's a strategy to circumvent the issue with the cap not rising as expected this year, due to lower than anticipated revenues.
In my opinion it is a smart maneuver by Tampa Bay, in order to maximize an opportunity for more championships that has a relatively short window.
New Orleans leveraging the future does not make sense to me though. They are maybe a nine-win team, a borderline top-ten NFL at best. To me they would have been better off bottoming out and regrouping for 2022, rather than continuing to charge on their credit card. The Saints kicked the can down the road by restructuring $52 million in contracts, cap money that is being diverted for a year or two. Even with that they still had to release, trade or not re-sign eight players in order to save another $40 million on the cap. The salary cap had real consequences for them this offseason.
Pittsburgh is another team that used voidable years to get under the cap, yet still lost multiple players due to the cap.
If the cap increases dramatically the next couple years then teams using voidable years will have won that bet; if not then their situations will be even worse than it was before. While the NFL did sign big broadcasting rights contracts recently, last year's revenue shortfall will still be spread out over two more seasons.
Using voidable years to lower the current cap just seems like a very risky business strategy to me. And even if the cap goes up enough that a team can cover next year's cap acceleration, it will still give them fewer cap dollars to spend in 2022 than a team that did not use this tactic. That in turn will mean said club has less money to re-sign their own players than other teams, and less money to sign other free agents.
The Saints are an extreme case. They've kicked cap hits down the road so much that the only cap era comparison might be the Saints in the mid-2010s, when their can kicking from previous years did indeed catch up to them and made them a 7-win team despite having prime Brees. They did the same thing again, and I think they were smart to do it even if it didn't work out. They put some super teams on the field for the last four seasons, but Brees wasn't what he used to be and it cost them down the stretch. At this point, I think they almost have no choice but to ride it out. They still have a really competitive roster - maybe the best of the league not including QB - and blowing it all up might not be their best move if they can keep it together one more year and pray that either Winston, Hill, or perhaps a surprise draft pick can lead them to another playoff run. They will be blowing it all up soon, though.
The Bucs are just getting started. They still have cap flexibility for next year, since going into this offseason they had almost zero liability in dead money or bad contracts. I see no reason they can't keep the team in tact at least for 2022 and maybe beyond, and even add another star player or two next year. You have a lot of leeway when you just had four home run drafts in a row, an elite QB at an affordable price, and haven't overpaid for anyone on the roster yet.