Every NFL team has some dead money on its salary cap, money that is allocated to a certain player who’s no longer on the team. But no team is allocating cap space like the Saints.
In New Orleans, 20 percent of the cap is dead money, according to Spotrac. Among the players who count huge amounts against the Saints’ salary cap even though they’re no longer on the team are tight end Jimmy Graham ($9 million), guard Ben Grubbs ($6 million), linebacker Junior Galette ($5.45 million) and linebacker Curtis Lofton $5 million).
The Saints’ cap situation has been problematic for a while now, and the problem isn’t going away. Based on the contracts they already have, the Saints are projected to be $7.3 million over the cap next year.
The team with the lowest dead cap number is the Bengals, who have less than $1 million allocated to players no longer on the team. Bengals owner Mike Brown has been criticized at times for being miserly, but if you’re going to criticize the Bengals for that, you also have to credit them for being smart enough to make the playoffs four years in a row while not mortgaging the future with high-priced contracts for players who don’t last.
The player with the league’s highest dead-cap number is Ndamukong Suh, who counts $9.737 million against the Lions’ salary cap this year even though he signed with the Dolphins in March. After Suh, the highest dead cap number in the NFL is $9.5 million, the amount of the Ravens cap that is allocated to Ray Rice.