Dead Cap, Zombie Cap, and Mickey Loomis: The Night King of the Salary Cap

Overly optimistic Saints fans and low energy analysts have casually nicknamed Mickey Loomis a 'cap wizard.' Here at FireMickeyLoomis.com I call him some other names: Cap Voldemort, Cap Sauron, and now Night King of the Salary Cap. I recently saw a post commending Mickey Loomis because the New Orleans Saints show only $2.8 million of dead cap for 2024 (never mind that this only because Thomas, Winston, and Peat's contracts haven't voided yet, which carry a combined $42 million dead cap). In the past, Loomis defenders have pointed to dead cap numbers that can at times be low or average to argue that Mickey Loomis is a competent NFL General Manager or to praise his moves to extend aging, injury prone, ineffective players. Across the league, low dead cap has become a standard for measuring General Managers competence. Unfortunately, its a flawed standard.

The concept of 'dead cap' is that as a measure of salary cap charges for players no longer on the roster, it can measure the amount of money a GM has wasted on bad contracts, and therefore the efficiency of their roster management. The problem with this concept is that as long as a player is still on the roster, their productivity, health, and value are not a consideration. As long as they are on the roster, the dead cap metric sees their contract as a win. In many cases, this could not be further from the truth. As a GM, Mickey Loomis is the archetype of a riverboat gambler. He maxes out the salary cap, seeks out players with troubling injury histories, retains players with suspensions and disciplinary problems, trades up in the draft to select raw project players with incredible athletic metrics or measurables, and generally takes a lot more risks than most GMs. Yet, he is often able to keep dead cap under control. How does he do this? He simply doesn't cut or trade players who underperform, struggle with injury, don't fit the system, or have giant unrealistic salary numbers the final year of their deals that were meant to act as effective void years to inflate the average value of their deals for ego purposes. He retains those players and refinances their contracts to push the cap dollars due out to the future, and other signs declining players to extensions to further delay the cap ramifications. In the 'dead cap' view this is incredibly efficient. As a player declines and their contract approaches expiration, instead of cutting them early and taking a massive dead cap hit that could hurt his reputation, Loomis restructures their contract to set up an even bigger dead cap hit when their contract is set to expire. When it is set to expire, he signs them to an extension to delay it further. If the player declines enough and their market value is much lower, Loomis can offer them less than their previous salary in the extension years, but more than their market value to any other team, winding down the dead cap over further years, so when they finally retire, are not extended, or pass from natural causes in the loving presence of their great grandchildren, the cap hit is smaller that year, although the money wasted over the years on an unproductive player is much greater.

But what Mickey Loomis does is not efficient. It is a loophole in dead cap that actually makes the problem much worse. Dead cap is not good, but it is not the worst kind of wasted cap. What Mickey Loomis creates is what I like to call Zombie Cap. While dead cap is the money a team spends on players who are no longer on the roster, Zombie Cap is the money a team spends on declining players in excess of their market value in order to 'pay the vig' to delay dead cap hits. Its money flushed down the toilet just like dead cap, but Zombie Cap is even worse because it doesn't die in a year or two. When a player is cut or traded, their dead cap hit comes swiftly in one year, and then they are off the books. If they are a post-June-1 cut or trade, its divided over two years. But either way, after that, its gone. Zombie Cap can live on indefinitely.

In 2023 the Saints faced a $17 million cap hit for 34 year old Cameron Jordan who registered 2 sacks in 17 games despite an elite secondary making it hard for opposing QBs to get rid of the ball quick and a historically easy schedule facing a laundry list of struggling offenses and atrocious backup QBs. According to Spotrac.com, Jordan's play was worth $2.4 million while he counted $17 million against the Saints salary cap. Jordan is due to count $14 million against the Saints salary cap in 2024 after a restructure, $20 million in 2025 (or $10 million if restructured), and $15 million of dead cap in 2026 when his contract expires (or $25 million dead cap if his contract is restructured in 2025 as expected). As a 34 year old defensive end in decline, if we count Jordan's value generously at $3 million per year at this point in his career, the Saints will likely eat Zombie Cap numbers of $14 million in 2023, $11 million in 2024, $7 million in 2025, and then $25 million dead cap in 2026. The combined $32 million of Zombie Cap from 2023-2025 will outweigh the $25 million of dead cap in 2026. But if the past is any guide, the Saints will extend Cameron Jordan in 2026 if he agrees, and eat over $50 million in total Zombie Cap to try to get the dead cap down to $10-15 million so it looks better on Mickey Loomis's resume. That is not good cap management, its a PR loophole for a failed GM.

Michael Thomas has played a total of 20 games in the 4 seasons from 2019-2023. In those years his cap hits have been $7 million in 2020, $10 million in 2021, $13 million in 2022, $14 million in 2023, and $18 million of total dead cap scheduled for 2024-2025. That's a combined total of $62 million for 20 games. Yet, only $18 million counts as dead cap, while the majority is Zombie Cap. But the jury is still out, and Michael Thomas could be extended, despite 4 years of clear evidence that he can no longer complete a full season, because by keeping him under contract just like he did last year, Mickey Loomis can make dead cap disappear and make Michael Thomas's time on the IR seem like money well spent.

Ryan Ramczyk has a degenerative knee condition, needed an extra day of rest every week in 2023 just like Jimmy Graham who recently retired, and finished the season on the IR unlike Graham. Ryan Ramczyk's career arc unfortunately seems to be mirroring that of another legendary Saints right tackle, Kyle Turley. Turley's 6th season was his last to play 16 games or more. Ramczyk's 6th season in 2022 he played 16 games and only managed 12 in 2023, followed by a degenerative diagnosis, IR, surgery, and crossed fingers. Ramczyk is due to count $27 million against the 2024 cap, $28 million against the 2025 cap, $25 million against the 2026 cap, and have a small dead cap hit of $2.5 million in 2027. But if he was cut not, Ramczyk would generate a $28 million dead cap hit, ruining Mickey Loomis's personal reputation even if it got the Saints out of a bad deal long term. If instead Ram's contract is restructured annually in 2024-2026, he will generate a dead cap hit of $25 million in 2027 after also paying him $58 million of Zombie Cap dollars from 2024-2026 in which its very possible he will never be healthy or effective again and will create a constant question mark shifting players around the offensive line as he comes in and out of the lineup.

Derek Carr could be the biggest Zombie Cap hit of them all. While he was able to juice his numbers in relatively meaningless games at the end of our season that depended on the Panthers beating the Bucs in the final week to give us any chance (the Panthers were held scoreless the final two weeks of the season), Carr was disappointing overall, especially in the games where the Saints controlled their own destiny or faced good opposing QBs. The amazing QB's Carr beat to lead the Saints to 9 wins were Baker Mayfield (1-1), Desmond Ridder (1-1), Bryce Young (2-0), Tommy Devito, Tyson Bagent, Garret Minshew, Mac Jones, and Ryan Tannehill. Those aren't the worst examples, those are all the QB's he beat his first year for a $150 million contract. Essentially, Carr went all season without beating a QB who we could not now or in the recent past easily have pictured playing in the XFL sometime down the road. The best QB Carr beat all year was Baker Mayfield, who looked well on his way to the XFL before a comeback season this year. Ridder, Bagent, and Devito have probably talked to XFL teams recently. Bryce Young is well on track to be the subject of news articles about a comeback attempt via the XFL in a few years. Minshew and Jones are not far off. Tannehill may be more likely to retire or take a safe backup gig, but he is a few bad investments away from taking the call from the XFL. If Carr can't beat any QB who is not on the XFL's radar, Carr himself may be a few bad seasons away from the XFL himself.

Except Carr can't be in the XFL in a few years, because the Saints can't release him even if he does no better in 2024 or 2025 thanks to Mickey Loomis. Carr does not necessarily need to succeed at all to remain a Saint through 2030. Carr's contract was just restructured and releasing him in 2025 would lead to a $50 million dead cap hit. Restructuring Carr in 2025 instead will lead to a $52 million dead cap hit if he is released in 2026. If the Saints can't afford to release Carr in 2026, which the way Mickey Loomis manages their cap they won't be able to, Carr is due $50 million base salary in 2026, a number many considered to be a joke monopoly money figure when the contract was signed that would never be paid out and was just there to inflate the value of the contract and stroke Carr's ego. But Carr is a smart man. If the Saints can't afford not to restructure his deal in 2026, because they don't have the cap room to take a $52 million dead cap hit, he will get paid that money. If Carr's $50 million salary in 2026 is restructured, he will carry a dead cap hit somewhere in the neighborhood of $75 million in 2027, leading to an extension, even if he has not played well, isn't healthy, and isn't the starting QB. But that would prevent dead cap and continue to stretch out the payments to Carr to avoid a big $50-75 million hit coming in one year that Mickey Loomis can't afford to pay. The ultimate outcome could be paying Carr $10-20 million per year in new money from 2027-2030 as a backup QB in order to slowly draw out the $75 million in what otherwise would have been dead cap as additional compensation, meaning Carr could average cap costs of $15 million new money and $18 million old money, or $33 million per year in total cap charge per year, from 2027-2030 as the Saints veteran backup QB. Over the coming years Derek Carr may account for upward of $150 million in Zombie Cap earnings.

In the Game of Thrones, the Night King lives far north of the wall. Rather than letting his mortal subjects rest in peace, he uses dark magic to resurrect the dead and dismembered as white walkers, undead zombies who plod around his kingdom doing his bidding and bringing sorrow to the living. But as the long night approaches he marches south to cross the wall and terrorize the kingdoms of men. As General Manager of the New Orleans Saints, Mickey Loomis is a self styled salary cap wizard. For most of the year he lives far north of the upcoming years salary cap, but as the new league year approaches he uses his dark salary cap magic to maneuver south of the cap, breaking down walls to cover as much territory as it takes in no time at all. He resurrects anticipated dead cap by restructuring the contracts of ineffective and dismembered players to turn dead cap in Zombie Cap, yielding long terms commitments to players with degenerative knee conditions who plod around the field as cap zombies, bringing sorrow to the kingdom of Saints fans. Every year, Loomis's army of cap zombies grows, and few contracts set to expire are allowed to rest in peace. Mickey Loomis is more than just a salary cap wizard, he is The Night King of the Salary Cap. And when a team can't afford to move on from players who play 10 games in 3 years, only beat XFL quality competition, or are due $25 million a year with a degenerative knee condition, etc, and the team is already $50 million over the 2025 salary cap before the 2024 season has ever started, you better believe that winter is coming, unless Mickey Loomis is soon banished beyond the walls of the Saints facility.