The biggest decision facing the New Orleans Saints this offseason was whether Derek Carr would be returning for another year and based on what general manager Mickey Loomis and new coach Kellen Moore had to say at the NFL Scouting Combine this week, it seems that Carr will be back in New Orleans for a third season with the Saints.
During his press conference on Wednesday, Loomis was asked about the team’s quarterback situation and he seemed confident that the Saints can win games with Carr.
“We feel like we’ve got a guy we can win with, and we’re excited about it,” Loomis said, via ESPN.com.
That’s as close as anyone in the organization has come to saying that Carr would return. Questions have been swirling about Carr’s future for multiple reasons. For one, the quarterback has a $51.48 million salary cap hit for the 2025 season, which is a huge number for a team that’s currently $47 million OVER the cap, according to latest numbers from Overthecap.com. And let’s not forget, Carr made it clear in January that he wouldn’t be taking a pay cut to help the team. There was also some question about whether new coach Kellen Moore wanted to move forward with Carr as his quarterback. During his introductory press conference on Feb. 13, Moore sounded non-committal about sticking with Carr, but at the combine this week, Moore seemed a lot more enthusiastic about the idea.
“We feel fortunate to have Derek here, the experience he has. He’s a big-time quarterback in this league,” Moore said Wednesday, via ESPN.
Carr put up impressive numbers with the Saints last season in 10 games of action, but those numbers went down whenever the Saints played a good team. Carr faced three playoff teams during the 2024 regular season and not only did the Saints go 0-3 in those games, but they averaged just 13 points per game. When facing non-playoff teams, Carr went 5-2 with the Saints averaging 29.4 points per game.
The Saints have to be salary cap compliant by March 12 and if Carr is sticking around, that could make life easier for them. Although Carr has a $51.48 million cap hit, the Saints can pick up nearly $31 million in cap space by pulling off a simple restructure of Carr’s contract.
Loomis hinted that a contract restructure would probably be coming for Carr.
“There’s no secret to that and his is a big number, so we’re going to hopefully be able to maneuver,” Loomis said.
Carr is due a $10 million roster bonus on the fifth day of the league year in March and once he receives that, he’ll have made over $200 million for his career. As noted by the Associated Press, Carr will make some unfortunate history when that check hits his bank account, because he’ll become the first player in NFL history to earn more than $200 million, but have zero playoff wins to show for it.
There have been 14 quarterbacks in NFL history who have earned at least $200 million in their career and all of them have at least one playoff win, which is something that Carr doesn’t have. The 33-year-old has one career playoff start, which came with the Raiders, and he lost that wild-card game 26-19 to the Bengals back in January 2022.
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