New Orleans Saints salary cap guru Khai Harley deserves more respect

Name him the New Orleans Saints’ wage cap guru, wizard, maven, no matter you want: Khai Harley has earned a ton of credit score for altering how groups circumvent the NFL’s spending guidelines to maximise their assets. Now coming into his 14th yr with New Orleans, the Saints’ vp of soccer administration has been their secret weapon.

His bio on the official crew web site lists his tasks as working, “together with the participant personnel division, making participant acquisitions match inside the wage cap construction,” in addition to, “contract negotiations, coordinating completely different areas of soccer operations, roster administration and different administrative capabilities of working the membership.”

He’s the one who has popularized contract restructures throughout the NFL, empowered by basic supervisor Mickey Loomis to navigate the sophisticated language within the league’s Collective Bargaining Settlement. Keep in mind, these will not be pay cuts. It’s a conversion of a participant’s base wage (effectively, most of it, usually as much as the NFL-required minimal) right into a signing bonus that’s prorated over time remaining on that contract. The participant will get his cash instantly, whereas the crew doesn’t need to pay the invoice till later. Each side win as long as the crew’s proprietor is okay with writing extra checks and the participant stays wholesome and productive.

To be clear, Harley didn’t invent that maneuver: Tom Brady memorably agreed to a contract restructure in 2007 to facilitate the New England Patriots’ commerce for celebrity broad receiver Randy Moss. What Harley did innovate was using routinely voided years, or “ghost years” as followers have termed them. Groups have included choices in contracts for many years, often triggered on, say, the third or fifth day of the league’s fiscal yr, and a few gamers had void years written into their offers based mostly on efficiency (C.J. Spiller and Curtis Lofton every had this clause), however the thought of a ghost yr wasn’t actually a factor till Harley started writing them into contracts with Brees, Dannell Ellerbe, and Nick Fairley in 2016. Philadelphia Eagles government vp/basic supervisor Howie Roseman has garnered a popularity for additionally utilizing void years with abandon, however he didn’t decide up the development till 2017 in offers with Nick Foles and Chris Lengthy.

Ghost years enable groups to create extra money out of nothing within the brief time period. For instance, an $eight million signing bonus on a four-year deal would end in a prorated $2 million cap cost in annually (along with any wage ensures). But when the final two years void routinely, the crew would find yourself paying $Four million in “useless cash” within the third yr as soon as the deal expired. The chance in restructuring an present contract is that future cap hits (and probably useless cash owed) rise, regardless of the fast financial savings.

Restructures, usually with void years connected, have since turn out to be widespread working process throughout the NFL, with Over The Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald discovered that just about 55% of NFL groups accomplished a contract restructure sooner or later this offseason, with 37% of groups shifting greater than $6.5 million in restructured offers. And a fair smaller variety of rogue groups (roughly 20%), the Saints amongst them, moved $15 million or extra.

For years restructuring contracts was seen as a dangerous instrument most frequently reserved for no-doubt quarterbacks like Brady and Ben Roethlisberger. Danger-averse, old-school executives like ex-Inexperienced Bay Packers vp of finance Andrew Brandt continue to publicly rail against using them. Now greater than half the league is utilizing wage cap administration methods that Harley pioneered, most just lately the Los Angeles Rams (who restructured their contract with proper sort out Rob Havenstein on Saturday to jot down in two voidable years, creating greater than $Three million in badly-needed cap house).

How do they examine? Employed in Feb. 1999, Brandt fulfilled the identical function in Inexperienced Bay that Harley has had with the Saints till he resigned in Jan. 2008. The Brett Favre-led Packers groups he helped construct went a mixed 86-58 within the common season (.597) and 3-5 in postseason play; since being promoted to his present submit in 2013, Harley’s mostly-Drew Brees-quarterbacked Saints have gone 84-49 (.632) with a 3-Four postseason report in practically the identical timespan, although this season’s outcomes are clearly pending. The Saints would wish to complete at 5-12 or worse this season to realize a decrease win share than Brandt’s Packers did.

So whereas there’s a transparent philosophical distinction at work, it’s powerful to say one path is clearly superior to the opposite. Fitzgerald additionally discovered that whereas some modest restructured contracts can result in the next profitable share, there’s a threshold of diminishing returns — groups that moved an excessive amount of cash round, leaving useless cash cap hits left on the books as soon as some gamers have been launched or retired, had much less success as time wore on. Which is sensible. The concept is to have as many assets to work with as doable, to not hamstring your self.

However restructures weren’t at all times this prevalent. In 2013, Harley’s first on the job in his present capability, the Saints quickly restructured their contracts with mainstays like Jahri Evans, Ben Grubbs, Roman Harper, Marques Colston, and David Hawthorne. That not solely acquired them below the wage cap, it opened up sufficient cap house for the Saints to usher in free brokers like Keenan Lewis and Benjamin Watson.

This new flexibility additionally allowed the Saints to makes strikes that (on the time!) have been extremely lauded like extending Junior Galette and Jimmy Graham, plus bringing in Jairus Byrd and Spiller in subsequent offseasons. And Harley’s strategies are persevering with to evolve. He helped hammer out contract extensions with each of the crew’s 2017 first spherical picks this yr, inking Ryan Ramczyk and Marshon Lattimore to long-term offers and designing their contracts with restructures in thoughts for 2022 (when the Saints are already projected to be over the cap ceiling). Lattimore’s $27.Four million cap hit ranks highest on the crew, whereas Ramczyk’s $22.eight million cap hit is third-most. Restructuring each gamers yields a mixed $32.7 million in financial savings.

Clearly a few of these choices returned a greater funding than others. However that isn’t the purpose. The lesson the Saints took away from this new technique was that as long as the wage cap continued to rise (and as it would in 2023, as soon as new broadcasting rights offers flush tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into groups’ coffers) they may proceed to be aggressive in free company by restructuring contracts of cornerstone gamers. There’s some purple within the ledger right here and there, however on the entire the strategy paid off.

It could have paid off too effectively. Solely the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs have received extra video games during the last 5 years. Simply 5 groups have received extra video games during the last decade. It’s accomplished rather a lot to boost his profile. Harley was practically spirited away with Terry Fontenot when he took the Atlanta Falcons basic supervisor job, however the Saints have been in a position to retain him whereas bringing in a possible substitute, Tosan Eyetsemitan, who beforehand labored within the Cleveland Browns professional personnel division and, like Harley, has a background in monetary evaluation.

Eyetsemitan and Harley are the one members of the entrance workplace assigned to the soccer administration division. When Harley will get his personal basic supervisor place sometime — and it certain looks like a “when” difficulty, not “if” — the Saints wish to have somebody together with his abilities set able to step up.

Perhaps sometime Harley may have his personal “teaching tree” rising within the league, branching out to completely different franchises and persevering with to search out inventive options to NFL number-crunching. With the wage cap going to the moon, there can be loads of slices of the pie to go round. It’s as much as Harley and visionaries like him to carve it up.