Saints running back Alvin Kamara said he reported to training camp Wednesday because he’s “not stupid.” He wasn’t about to lose $50,000 a day in fines.
But Kamara wasn’t present simply to have a “hold-in” as he fully participated in the first practice.
While Kamara wants a new contract, he also wants to finish his career with the Saints.
“I want to be a Saint; I want to retire here,” Kamara said, via Luke Johnson of nola.com. “If I’ve got to play football somewhere else, I’ll probably be somewhere with my feet kicked up in Africa somewhere. I want to be a Saint.
“I’m not asking for nothing crazy where it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can’t do that.’ That’s my perception of it. Whatever the perception of it is upstairs [in the front office] with whoever makes those decisions is obviously different than what my perception of it is. So, you know, we just carry on. I’ve got to do what I do and I’ll focus on what I’ve got to do.”
The sides have made no significant progress on an extension, per Kamara.
Kamara has two years remaining on his contract, with his 2024 salary cap hit of $18.5 million the highest on the team. He has no guaranteed money for 2025 and a $29 million cap hit. So, the Saints assuredly will move on and recoup $18.9 million in cap savings if the sides can’t agree to a new deal.
He expected the Saints to restructure his deal, like they did in 2022 and 2023, and he skipped the final practice of minicamp to show his displeasure with the pace of talks.
“There was other talks about other things that I’m not going to get into, but I guess there were some feelings that I didn’t do something that they wanted me to do, and we’re here now,” Kamara said. “So, it ain’t really been too many conversations.”
Kamara’s future is in doubt, but his immediate future is in his hands, and he feels good about where he is.