NFL: Saints Bounty Thread

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John Clayton on the Saints/Brees situation
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Quote:The delay in the Saints getting a long-term deal done with Drew Brees has been one of the most baffling stories of the NFL offseason.

Both sides have until July 16 to carve out such a deal, and I still think that will happen. In fact, I came up with 23.5 million reasons a deal will be struck in the next week. The Saints can't afford to franchise him next year both from the financial and the personnel standpoint.

Unless the Saints plan to release him -- which can't be the case -- the salary-cap impact of a $23.6 million franchise tag in 2013 would be devastating to the franchise, so let's study the numbers.

The cap is only expected to increase from $120.6 million to around $121 million. With one unsigned draft choice, the Saints are already about $3 million over for next year and they have about $2.2 million of room for this season. Franchising Brees again would put the Saints more than $26 million over the cap and give them limited options for next year.

First, they would have to start evaluating expendable players. Cutting Jonathan Vilma would save them $6 million, so you can understand why Vilma's fighting as hard as he can to overturn his suspension. Because he would be the highest cap savings on the Saints' 2013 roster, he would lose this year's salary if the suspension holds and then would face the possibility of being off the roster next February.

The Saints could save $16 million by cutting linebacker Will Herring, $2.5 million by cutting running back Pierre Thomas and $1.7 million by cutting tight end David Thomas. Figuring a long-term deal with Brees might cost $10 million to $12 million, any of those four players might be cap casualties anyway, but the extra cap expense of a Brees franchise tag would cause more problems.

The Saints would have to look at whether or not they could keep safety Roman Harper, whose release would save them $3.4 million.

The Saints had $15.7 million of cap room headed into the 2012 offseason. They didn't re-sign wide receiver Robert Meachem, guard Carl Nicks, cornerback Tracy Porter, linebacker Jo-Lonn Dunbar and seven backups.

They freed up $14.5 million of cap room by restructuring five contracts, and in doing so, they had the luxury of signing guard Ben Grubbs, defensive tackle Brodrick Bunkley and linebackers Curtis Lofton, David Hawthorne and Chris Chamberlain.

Franchising Brees would make it difficult to re-sign 2013 free agents Devery Henderson, Sedrick Ellis, Jermon Bushrod, Scott Shanle and Jonathan Casillas.

All signs point to a deal getting done this week -- or else