Saints restructure the contract of C Erik McCoy.
The New Orleans Saints are beginning to do their annual work to get under the NFL salary cap.
On Wednesday afternoon, Nick Underhill of NewOrleans.Football reports that the Saints and center Erik McCoy have agreed to restructure his current contract. This is something that New Orleans and General Manager Mickey Loomis do each year with several veterans.
The Saints do this to avoid releasing talent and purging their roster, while still getting under the salary cap and being able to afford some activity on the free agent market. McCoy will almost certainly be one of a handful of other New Orleans players to have their current deals restructured.
This year's NFL salary cap is $279.2 million per team. That's an increase of $23.8 million over last season. Nevertheless, the Saints are one of the clubs most over the projected cap, meaning the team has significant work to do before the start of free agency next week.
Restructuring McCoy's contract could create nearly $7 million dollars in salary cap space for New Orleans. Early in the 2023 season, the Saints signed McCoy to a five-year contract extension worth a reported $63.7 million dollars.
Erik McCoy turns 28 just before the start of the 2025 regular season. He has been with the Saints for all of his six-year NFL career. New Orleans selected him in the second round of the 2018 NFL Draft with the 48th overall pick.
McCoy has been a starter since his rookie season. He was predominantly a guard in college but has been a center throughout his NFL career, and one of the better ones in the league.
Over his first two seasons, McCoy started all of his team's 32 games. He missed missed nine combined games in 2021 and 2022, but still made 25 starts. In 2023, he'd start all of the Saints 17 contests.
This past year, McCoy suffered a groin injury early in a Week 3 game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The injury forced McCoy to miss six consecutive games and seven of eight contests. He'd return to start three games, then missed the final two outings of the year after aggravating the injury in Week 16.
