Saints right guard Jahri Evans was selected to the Pro Bowl for the sixth-straight season in 2014, but his efforts on the field often fell short of the high level of performance implied by his inclusion on the roster.
Evans wound up missing the game because he had surgery on his wrist to repair torn ligaments after the end of the regular season and that injury may have affected him on the field. Whatever the cause, the Saints appear to feel that they’re on track to pay Evans more than they’d like to pay him for the 2015 season.
Katherine Terrell of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that the cap-strapped Saints have reached out to Evans’s representatives about the possibility of restructuring Evans’s deal. Evans is set to make $7.5 million in salary and bonuses in 2015 with a cap hit of $11 million with a similar setup for 2016, so it would seem that a straight pay cut would be in play since anything else will add to the cap burden down the road.
Terrell reports that Evans’s release is a possibility if things can’t be worked out and it will likely move up to a likelihood if Evans is unwilling to agree to a cut. The same could be true of left guard Ben Grubbs, who carries a $9.6 million cap hit, as the Saints try to put things back together after a 7-9 season.
