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Why Didn't the Saints Carry Over all of Their Salary Cap Space to 2016?

Poof! Just like that the Saints have more salary cap room! But why did they seemingly leave money on the table?

Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

The NFLPA announced each NFL team's 2016 salary cap carry over yesterday and the Saints chose to carry over $1.4 million from 2015 to 2016. Jackpot! A little extra playing-around money!

But the Saints, Denver Broncos, and Los Angeles Rams were the only three teams that opted to not carry over the full amount available to them. Wait... what the hell? Why would the Saints not want to carry over as much salary cap space as possible so they have more to spend on an expensive, oft-injured, aging veteran free agent?

Well calm down it's not a big deal. It's most likely because they still owed some 2015 incentive money. The Saints had a total of $1,442,714 available to carry over this year. As you know, many NFL player contracts contain incentives for performance, health, etc. The Saints probably still owed $42,714 in incentive money for 2015. So they simply applied that part of their salary cap rollover to cover the cost of those incentives. What's left over, the $1,400,000, is what gets carried over to 2016.