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Saints salary cap update before the 2021 NFL draft

Look around the NFL Twitter community or its subreddit and you’ll see a lot of pearl-clutching going on about the Saints salary cap, but there isn’t much worry going on in New Orleans. The Saints have stuck to their plan every step of the way to get here, hours before the 2021 NFL draft begins, and they’ll continue to be mindful of how to best maximize their resources. So how much cap space do they have anyway?

There are a lot of moving parts at this stage in the offseason so numbers are very much in flux, but the latest report from the NFL Players Association lists the Saints with $529,494 in breathing room beneath the cap, and 63 players under contract (of a possible 90). The experts at Spotrac have New Orleans with 62 contracts filed with the league, and with a more-generous $848,486 left to burn. On the other end of the spectrum, Over The Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald has the Saints with just $219,354 available to them, and 63 contracts signed.

The good news is that the Saints know exactly how much every draft pick will count against the cap, and those rookie contracts are quite affordable under the recent collective bargaining agreements. And because the Saints are over the top-51 threshold already, any new players signed will push less-valuable cap hits off the books. So if a rookie is brought on at, say, a $2.3 million cap hit (which is what Cesar Ruiz was owed last year), it would ultimately cost only $1.5 million to sign the player by negating a smaller contract.

So, sure, the Saints need more cap space. They’ll get more once Drew Brees’ post-June 1 retirement comes into effect, and they can find even more cap space by working out long-term extensions with key players like Ryan Ramczyk ($11 million cap hit), Marcus Williams ($10.6 million), and Marshon Lattimore ($10.2 million). They’ve got the means to make moves. For now, fans just have to be patient.

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Final 2021 Saints mock draft: seven rounds of picks, with trades