The New Orleans Saints are keeping quarterback Derek Carr for 2025, restructuring his contract in order to help the team alleviate its significant salary cap issues, according to a report by NFL Network.
Carr is due $30 million in salary and a $10 million roster bonus this season. By converting most of that $40 million into signing bonus, he can help the Saints clear over $30 million of the $39.5 million that they are currently over the salary cap — the worst such situation in the NFL, according to Over the Cap.
Carr has two years remaining on his contract with the Saints. He is scheduled to earn $40 million in 2025 and $50 million in 2026.
In 10 games with the Saints in 2024, the 33-year-old Carr averaged 214.5 yards per game, completed 67.7% of his passes and had a 101.0 passer rating.
Carr spent the last two seasons with the Saints. Before that, he played nine seasons with the Oakland and Las Vegas Raiders, who made him their second-round pick out of Fresno State in 2014. Carr has been a Pro Bowl selection four times in has career, most recently in 2022.
The Pittsburgh Steelers, who do not have a starting quarterback under contract for the 2025 season, could have been a fit for Carr if the Saints decided to release him. Doing so would have been difficult for New Orleans, as a pre-June 1 release or trade would not have saved them much, if any cap space, and it would have been hard for them to keep him on the books until that far in the offseason and get cap compliant by the start of the new league year next week.
It was reported by Ben Albright of KOA in Denver that the Steelers were waiting to see what was going to happen with Carr before making a decision on their own quarterback situation.
The Steelers would prefer to re-sign Justin Fields, but have not yet been able to, and it seems more likely that Fields will instead test the market when it opens on Monday at noon.
