New Orleans Saints Review

The NFL’s uncapped year is going to be a major pain – for the fans.  Thankfully, Mike Triplett the Times-Picayune wrote a helpful article explaining the crazy free agency rules.

The Saints, along with their fellow “final 4″ member Colts, Jets and Vikings cannot sign an unrestricted free agent unless they lose one first.  In which case, any free agent they sign must be at or below the lost free agent’s salary.  So if you lose a guy making $1 million, the guy you sign to replace him on your roster can’t make more than $1 million during the first year of his contract.  Yeah, who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?

So, don’t expect the Saints to make a lot of big splashes in free agency.  They have several restricted free agents that they must deal with and I would expect a lot of their efforts will be focused there.

As for the NFL and the players union, they must find a way to come to some sort of lasting labor agreement.  Personally, I root for the players in this one because they are the ones putting their bodies on the line, and the ones who get cut when they lose a step (I’m looking at you, LaDainian Tomlinson).  NFL contracts are pretty much the least secure of any of the 4 major North American sports.

But, I’m not a labor expert so I’ll digress.  Simply put, there is too much money to be made to risk a work stoppage of any kind.  So, I’m begging and pleading with both sides – get a deal done.  And get us away from this madness of the uncapped year!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.