This lad has @Big_Dan_Campbellâs number
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There was a clear pull on Lazardâs jersey before the INT that led to the TD just before the half.
As blatant as the missed holding on Bosa in the 4th quarter of the Superbowl on third and long. 
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Agreed. He actually held his jersey with both* hands.
*not at same time
Motor City Dan Campbell is part of the solution here - not the problem, buddy. He has hired a minority OC, DC, Assistant Head Coach and defensive backs coach to be part of his team. He is also working with one of the few black GMs in the league.
We need more men of integrity and purpose like big Dan Campbell
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Thats nice.
Yer man was saying you wouldnât see such clownishness on Saturday Night Live as @Big_Dan_Campbell press conference. Heâs a laughing stock already
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he has a habit of having laughing stock managers as his username
I fear his current incarnation may leave lasting damage
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I wouldnât worry too much about it and i doubt MCDC does either, he is very comfortable in his own skin.
Our last head coach spoke exclusively in coach speak and alienated every talented player in the locker room and filled out his coaching staff with guys from Syracuse where he coached a decade previosuly rather than NFL calibre coaches. Looking back it says a lot that not one Patriots staffer followed him to Detroit.
Big Dan has been able to attract multiple coaches who are highly respected in the league who had multiple job offers and they have chosen to come work for him. I wouldnât be too worried about a couple of soundbites in a 90 minute press conference, as I posted previously he made some excellent points too and is a leader of men.
Even without Stafford the Lions wonât be as bad a team as they were for the past 2 seasons. Big Danâs charisma and leadership traits will see to that.
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id love to see kevin kelley in the NFL. maybe he could replace lefleur 
Romo is a gem. I was watching that at the time⌠As the game was ending with a Mahomes run and slide he was saying that the Bucs would be fine.
Romo is a shrewd operator and a great co commenator. Since that match up the Bucs had their bye week and are 7-0. That bye week has allowed them to iron out a lot of things and they are a totally different team now to the one that lost to the chiefs in week 12. Eric Fisher tearing his achillies is a huge loss for the Chiefs and I expect Jamel Dean who didnât play in the regular season game against the chiefs and who has 4.3 speed to pick up Tyreek Hill instead of Davis who got torched in week 12. 290 out of Mahomes 325 yards against the Bills was to Hill and Kelce. Bucs have to find a way to limit the damage there and let Pringle/Robinson/Watkins/CEH try beat them instead.
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Winfield gonna make it back for the Dance?
Yea, Bucs will be at full strength.
Fisher is a big loss with Mitch Schwartz still outâŚ
Expecting a big game from chiefs D
Finished this, 2 part 30/30.
Very good.
Will throw it up in the morning when on the laptop
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Might not be formatted great
The New Orleans Saints rank No. 1 in salary cap concerns on a yearly basis.
But if those rankings were based on how concerned the team itself is about the cap, it would probably rank last.
If there were any doubt of that, restructuring Sheldon Rankinsâ contract in the fall probably sealed it. Rankins is a very likely candidate to leave in free agency, but the Saints reworked his contract anyway to free up cap space for 2020, despite the fact that heâll now count on the books for the next year or two, even if heâs not on the roster.
The Saints have become masters at pushing money down the road to sign free agents, banking on the fact that the salary cap ceiling would keep rising as money from new TV contracts poured in. But nobody could have anticipated the lost revenue from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead of the salary cap making its annual $10 million jump, itâs expected to either stagnate or drop in 2021. That could mean anywhere from a minimum of $175 million to what it was last year, around $198 million.
Without that buffer, and with looming decisions on Drew Brees, the Saints are projected to have almost $300 million in salary cap liabilities prior to the new league year, although only the top 51 salaries will count toward the cap in the offseason. That means theyâre potentially somewhere in the range of $100 million over the cap.
While that certainly has consequences, itâs not as dire as it seems once they make some moves. Here are a few transactions they can make to ease the cap burden this year.
Place Drew Brees on reserve/retired
The Saintsâ strategy with Drew Brees has essentially been to push his cap hit down the road with extensions every two years dating back to 2016. They gave him small base salaries and large signing bonuses that could be spread out throughout the rest of the contract instead of trying to fit it all in one year.
The idea was that the salary cap would continue to rise with new TV money and when the day came that Brees would retire, the cap theoretically would have risen enough to absorb it. A few years ago, the team got the idea to add âvoidable years,â which expire automatically at the start of the new league year but allow them to spread the signing bonus out longer. The catch is that these bonuses still accelerate into the cap if Brees doesnât see the end of the contract.
While this has worked well for the Saints, itâs also resulted in a massive $36 million salary-cap figure if he remained on the roster in 2021. Had that occurred, the Saints wouldâve just renegotiated and pushed it back another year.
But with Breesâ retirement looming, theyâre going to have to swallow some sort of hit this year. There are a few options here that essentially boil down to this: Either they take the entire sum, and $22.6 million in dead money, for the 2021 league year, or they split up the charge into 2 years by designating him a post-June 1 cut. That allows them to spread out the cap hit, but it also means they have to carry the money on the 2021 salary cap until June.
Former agent Joel Corry suggested this: Brees and the Saints agree to reduce his salary to the league minimum of $1.075 million (since he wonât see it anyway). That gives them $23.9 million to work with during free agency. He would stay on the roster until June 2, at which point he would be placed on the reserve/retired list. The Saints would carry cap hits of $11.15 million in 2021 and $11.5 million in 2022 by doing it this way.
Cap savings: $13.5 million or $25 million (post-June 1 release).
Extend Ryan Ramczyk
For all of the hand-wringing about how the Saints would pay for a Ryan Ramczyk extension, itâs rarely said that extending him as soon as possible would only benefit them in 2021 in terms of cap space.
Thereâs no question the Saints will make every attempt to keep Ramczyk, one of the best right tackles in the game. Right now heâs set to play on his fifth-year option, which would count $11.064 million against the salary cap this year.
Take Cam Jordan as an example. He agreed to his first new contract in June of 2015, the same year he wouldâve been playing on his fifth-year option. That lowered his cap hit to only $4.1 million for the season (although salaries have jumped quite a bit since that year).
Itâs likely that Ramczyk could draw a record deal, and while specific numbers depend on how the market shakes out, the Saints can fit it under the cap due to how they structure their deals with low first-year numbers. Even Andrus Peatâs new deal last year carried a $3.6 million cap charge.
The Saints could also choose to do this with Marshon Latimore depending on their long-term outlook of his future and whether or not theyâd prefer to wait on a new contract for him.
The Eagles signed right tackle Lane Johnson to a new deal in 2019 with a $7.6 million cap charge in the first year. Even if we guessed and rounded up to $8 million for Ramczyk, that would still save several million, so weâll put a ballpark figure here.
Cap savings: Several million ($3-7 million).
Restructure Andrus Peat
A simple conversion of Peatâs base salary to a signing bonus spread out for the final four years of the contract would lower his cap hit to $5,600,000.
Cap savings: $6 million
Restructure Terron Armstead
This is the same deal as Peat and something the Saints have done with Armsteadâs contract several times. Lowering his base salary to the 2021 league minimum of $1.075 million gives them a signing bonus of $9.075 million to split over three years (the last two years of the contract are voidable). This will lower his 2021 cap number to around $10.2 million.
Cap savings: $6 million
(Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
Restructure Michael Thomas
Hereâs another example of a simple cap maneuver to free up short-term money. The Saints could reduce Thomasâ $12.6 million base salary to $1 million for 2021, convert the remainder to a signing bonus and spread it out over four years, lowering his cap hit from $18.8 million in 2021 to $10.1 million. Trading Thomas would not free up cap space in 2021 due to the acceleration of his remaining signing bonus into the contract.
Cap savings: $8.7 million
Release Kwon Alexander
There was always the sense that linebacker Kwon Alexander could be a rental, and there was a reason the Niners were willing to part ways with him in a trade last fall. San Francisco essentially wanted to dump Alexanderâs salary, and even when he was healthy, it was essentially assumed that the Saints wouldnât take on his 2021 salary at its current price.
The Saints arenât paying Alexander $13.4 million next year, especially considering he tore his Achilles late in the season and will have a long road to recovery. They will likely be on the hook for some sort of injury settlement in light of that, but because thereâs no dead money left on his deal, releasing him would be an easy way to free up a significant amount of space.
This doesnât mean the Saints canât bring him back on a much smaller payscale, as such negotiations are fairly commonplace. However, Alexander, 26, would have to agree to that, and itâs possible he elects to take his chances elsewhere since heâs still young and productive. Either way, expect some significant changes to this contract in 2021.
Cap savings: $13 million+
Release Nick Easton
Reserve lineman Nick Easton did a solid job of filling in wherever he was needed last year, but he has several things going against him now. His cap number has jumped from $2.5 million to $7 million in 2021, making him quite an expensive backup. If the Saints feel confident enough to move Cesar Ruiz to center and Erik McCoy to guard with plans to start Ruiz full-time, they might not feel like they need Easton as much as they did last year.
Couple that with an uncertain future due to several concussions sustained this season and Eastonâs no sure thing to be on the roster next year. Cutting him would save quite a chunk of money.
Cap savings: $6 million
Release Jared Cook
While many Saints contracts now void automatically on the first day of the new league year, Cookâs contract is a little murkier. He has an $8.04 million roster bonus due on the second day of the league year. While the consensus is that the contract does void at some point, itâs unclear when, meaning the Saints might have to release him before the roster bonus is due to hit.
But the nitty-gritty details donât change the overall point: The Saints will likely move on from Cook and take him off the books in 2021 after a disappointing 2020 campaign.
Cap savings: $11.1 million
Release Thomas Morstead
This is going to be a tough pill to swallow for Saints fans, as Morsteadâs potential departure will mean only Malcolm Jenkins remains from the 2009 Super Bowl-winning roster. But itâs been clear since training camp that the Saints were making contingency plans for life after Morstead. Carrying Blake Gillikin on the roster was a fairly big clue.
Morstead is due to make $4.5 million in salary and bonuses in 2021, at which point he will be 35. Releasing him wonât save an outrageous amount of money, but it will open up $2.5 million in cap room. Gillikin would count only $780,000 against the cap in 2021 if he enters the season as the starting punter.
While this is another situation where a pay cut is possible, it seems unlikely. The more likely option is that the Saints move on and Morstead catches on somewhere else.
Cap savings: $2.5 million
(Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
Extend or restructure Taysom Hill
If Brees retires and Hill is the quarterback of the future, then a $16 million cap hit makes perfect sense. If heâs not, $16 million looks pretty expensive for a utility player.
But the Saints could essentially add an automatically voidable year and convert his base salary into a signing bonus. If they brought his salary down to the league minimum for 2021, they could spread the $9,730,000 over two years, lowing his cap hit to $11.2 million in 2021.
Cap savings: $4.95 million
Release Janoris Jenkins
Janoris Jenkins was an upgrade over Eli Apple, but he certainly wasnât perfect in 2020, and itâs hard to imagine the Saints are going to pay him like one of the top corners in the league ($14.2 million against the cap), especially if Lattimore doesnât get an extension in the immediate future. The Saints structured the contract so they could get out of it in 2021 if they wanted. While having no top corners behind him is a concern, the more pressing issue is the cap implications, and releasing him immediately frees up money (agreeing to a pay cut seems doubtful in this case).
Cap savings: $7 million
Release Malcom Brown
If the Saints feel confident about some of their young players on the defensive line, they could move on from Malcom Brown, who is in the final season of his contract.
Cap savings: $5 million
Other moves things to consider
Releasing backup corner Patrick Robinson would save $2.6 million against the cap. Cam Jordanâs contract could also be restructured and free up about $8 million in cap room, however, if the Saints have any potential concerns about releasing him after the 2021 season, it would make his future cap numbers go up. Emmanuel Sandersâ $10 million cap hit is prime for some sort of change. The Saints likely need him next year unless they draft a receiver, so a restructure or additional voidable years seems more likely.
Also note that several players will still count against the cap next season due to voidable years, including Rankins ($2-4 million).
Total cap savings: With all of these moves, savings of $100 million or more is possible.
(Top photo of Janoris Jenkins: Derick Hingle / USA Today)
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