During last Sunday night’s FNIA review of the day that was, I praised Saints running back Alvin Kamara for having a great start to the season despite the fact that he’s on track to be released after the season. Some were surprised by that remark.
But it’s really no surprise. For anyone who isn’t tracking the various contractual nuances that impact a broad range of players at any given time, certain realities can seem surreal. Such as, for example, the idea that the Saints will release Kamara after this season, no matter how well it goes for him, or them.
The problem comes from the $25 million compensation package he’s due to earn next year. That was never a real number; the goal was to pump his new-money APY to $15 million. And it worked, the same as the fake final year in Tyreek Hill’s original Dolphins deal, which pushed the APY to $30 million.
As the saying goes, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on. When it comes to contracts with annual values boosted by phony-baloney final years, the truth can have a suit of armor and a horse and a lance and a flaming sword and most will ignore it.
For the Saints and Kamara, the reckoning is arriving. He’ll be cut after the season, without a new deal. He wanted to get a new deal before the current season; at one point, he left the team’s mandatory minicamp as a display of his discontent.
Eventually, he accepted the fact that there’s nothing to do but play well and hope the Saints will make him an offer he won’t refuse. If they don’t, he’ll want to maximize his money elsewhere.
Maybe in Denver, for a possible reunion with Sean Payton, the man who made him a third-round pick in 2017.
It’s easy to assume that a big year for Kamara in 2024 will equate to a big contract in 2025. For Kamara, however, the challenge becomes proving that he’ll still have it beyond this year.
He turns 30 next July. Thus, no matter what he does this season, the calendar will become the strongest counter to whatever he hopes to earn in 2025 and beyond.
That’s surely why he was trying to get the deal done this year. By next year, with the witching hour of every running back’s career approaching, it might take even more than a phony final season to get another market-level deal.