Saints QB Drew Brees confirmed Wednesday that were discussions regarding his contract last week during the team’s pursuit of CB Josh Norman, per Katherine Terrell.
Head coach Sean Payton did, however, specify that they discussed a restructured deal and not a new contract, per Terrell.
Brees mentioned there’s still no deadline to get a new contract in place with the team before adding that he doesn’t take these things personally, per Terrell.
ESPN’s Ed Werder first reports that Brees wanted the Saints to sign Norman and was willing to “modify” his contract to facility a deal between the two parties.
New Orleans’ efforts to sign Norman ultimately failed and he signed a five-year, $75 million deal with the Redskins last week.
The Saints are obviously in a tough position in regards to their cap, so they would have had to do something in order to fit Norman on their books. Brees represents the easiest source of cap space, seeing as he counts their $30 million against their 2016 cap.
It would be interesting to know if Brees was willing to take a pay cut to sign Norman, or if he was willing to just modify the deal to spread out his cap hit.
Werder reported a month ago that the Saints were discussing a four-year contract extension with Brees and a new deal would offer them a much better cap situation moving forward.
Although, there could be a good distance between the two parties in terms to what Brees is worth.
Brees, 37, has one year remaining on his five-year, $100 million contract that included $40 million guaranteed. He stands to make a base salary of $19.75 million of in 2016, while $10.85 million of that salary was guaranteed as of last Wednesday.
In 2015, Brees has thrown for 4,870 yards while completing 68.3 percent of his passes to go along with 32 touchdowns and 11 interceptions over the course of 15 games. Pro Football Focushas him rated as the No. 6 quarterback out of 37 qualifying players.
We’ll have more regarding a contract extension for Brees as the news is available.
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