New Orleans Saints salary cap space after latest free agency moves
It's been a busy start to free agency for the New Orleans Saints , but where do they stand against the salary cap? The experts at Over The Cap have the Saints with $19.1 million in room, having restructured Erik McCoy 's contract to accommodate salary cap hits for David Edwards ($6.3 million) and Ryan Wright (over $1.8 million). So there's our starting point. What about their other deals? We'll have to do some guesswork until those details are reported.
Assuming Etienne's four-year deal is structured just like the Saints did with Edwards, he'll have a base salary at the veteran minimum: $1.17 million. Edward received half of his guarantees as a signing bonus, so if the Saints followed the same approach it would be a $14 million signing bonus for Etienne (he was guaranteed $28 million per Ari Meirov for The 33rd Team ). Edwards didn't receive a void year so we're guessing Etienne won't, either. That suggests a 2026 cap hit of about $4.67 million.
What about Noah Fant ? Meirov also reported that he received $4.5 million in guarantees. Same approach here. Fant would be guaranteed a base salary at $1.3 million (the minimum for a seven-year pro). Make the remaining $3.2 million a signing bonus paid out over two years and it results in a cap hit of $2.9 million. That may not be the right number in the end, but it's our best guess.
It's important to remember that teams only count the top 51 contracts against the salary cap during the offseason. So even if an estimated $4.67 million for Etienne and $2.9 million for Fant equals $7.57 million, you would subtract the contracts being pushed below that top-51 threshold from the cost of signing them. For the Saints, that means taking out $2.01 million from a couple of $1.005 million deals being displaced. The end result: signing Etienne and Fant at those amounts would cost the Saints just $5.56 million. Take it out of their current cap space and you've got an estimate of about $13.5 million.
That's a good position to be in. Obviously we aren't at the end of the road yet. The Saints will sign more free agents and they'll need to reserve some money for signing their 2026 rookie draft class. OTC estimates the cap costs for their current draft picks would be almost $7.6 million. Expect more Saints salary cap maneuvers to not just account for that rookie pool but other roster moves, expected or surprising. We'll have a better idea of what resources the Saints can work with once those contract details for Etienne and Fant are cleared up.
This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: NFL free agency: Saints salary cap space after more reported signings
