Scooter Hobbs

For the moment, never mind Drew Brees.

You’d have thought he’d have retired officially from the Saints by now, but he certainly has earned the right to take his sweet time before … well, retiring.

That’s not important now.

But by all accounts, one way or another, with or presumably without Brees, the team plans to defy the odds and field a franchise next season, probably in the NFC South.

So, right on schedule, here come the doomsday scenarios for the Saints.

It’s the NFL salary cap again. Of course it is. What else would it be?

Every year. Same thing. You can set your calendar by it. It’s dire. The sky is falling. Meteors are crashing around the Superdome, panic on Poydras Street.

Anyway you compute it, the Saints are in a real pickle.

The Athletic, a sports-based website, among others, is tossing around numbers like $100 million over the cap — American dollars — and nobody even knows what the salary cap will be yet.

But, of course, it won’t be good news. No healthy bump this year. Instead it will likely be even less than last year due to this season’s unheard of decreased NFL revenue, pandemic-related as you already guessed (all those cardboard-cutout fans cost real money).

The new cap might leave the Saints as much as $105 million over it, maybe $110 million, could even be more.

How does that happen? Who knows? But run for your lives anyway.

Danger, Will Robinson.

You’d think they were talking about the national debt or the federal budget deficit, which for all I know may be the same thing.

These cap discussions always sound like those economists with the seriously furrowed brows seriously tossing around their ultra-serious trillion-dollar scenarios, hopefully to scare the wits out of all of us, if not force us to refinance that home mortgage.

When it’s your favorite NFL team, however, it really gets serious.

Not to worry.

Exactly how the Saints will deal with this is about $100 million over my pay grade.

But, trust me, it will get done.

It always does.

You’ll hear terms like “base salaries” and “deferred options” and “voidable years” and “delayed signing bonus” and “dead money,” which, when combined, makes it all sound like a delightful Ponzi scheme.

It’s amazing.

The way these NFL cap managers can make dollar-sign numbers with lots of commas dance a two-step, you’d think they all tutored under public embezzlers or casino skimmers.

But it’s all legal. Or must be.

The Saints have always been among the best at it.

We have seen this movie before — every year, it seems.

And we know how it ends.

A trusted veteran or two may be sacrificed at the financial altar. A sentimental favorite may retire early. Some others may consider the going salaries in the civilian world and decide restructuring isn’t such a bad thing if he only takes a million or two off the top.

Defer this, delay that.

Logic says eventually the bill has to come due, probably with disastrous results.

But they’ve been doing it for 20-25 years and it hasn’t come home to roost yet.

I dare you to search the archives and find one instance in which an NFL team had to forfeit a game because it showed up for kickoff with NFL auditors waving sheets of incriminating salary cap evidence at them.

So if the Saints want to get involved in free agency or big trades — like maybe even a Matt Stafford or DeSean Watson to replace Brees — a little technicality like the salary cap isn’t going to deter them.

They’ve figured it out before.

The Saints, with relatively stable staff and front office in recent years, are also encountering major poaching from both this offseason.

Presumably will all get replaced.

Minor inconvenience.

Funny thing about football staffs.

In the college game every assistant coach opening is a full-blown crisis, followed daily on the rumor mills, requiring extra logs on the social-media fire, sometimes to the point of tracking private planes to and from college towns.

Staff changes happen just as much in the NFL, but there it’s just another day at the office. They get filled by somebody or another and life moves on.

I suspect the Saints will too.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.comScooter Hobbs (American Press)