The New Orleans Saints have restructured Drew Brees’ contract

Drew Brees joined Bobby Hebert on Sports Talk for his weekly “QB To QB” segment Wednesday night, and the Saints’ quarterback talked about the progress he has made in rehabbing the bruised rotator cuff that caused him to miss a game due to injury for the first time in his career.

ESPN reporter Field Yates said the deal creates $2.6 million for the Saints this season by turning a portion of Brees’ guaranteed salary into a signing bonus.

The move, first reported by ESPN, will create $2.6 million in salary cap space. The reduction in Brees’ base salary, from $18.75 million to $12.4 million, causes his cap number to skyrocket to $30 million for next year, which is the highest in the NFL. But whatever decision the team makes with Brees’ contract going forward won’t be affected by his latest contract tweak.

Coach Sean Payton says Brees has “done well” with his rehabilitation and his availability will be based on his performance at practice. “I feel really good about Sunday”.

“Really, it was about how functional could I be”, he said. Another words the bar of if he’s healthy we play him and so it doesn’t, especially at his position, oh he’s going play if he 80 percent, that’s something we would never do. There’s elements to that that put different stresses on the shoulder and you have to experience those things before you get into live action.

“I’ll see how the shoulder responds tomorrow, but each day I’m able to do more”, Brees said.

Winless through three weeks, the Saints trail the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons by three games. There’s times where you have to throw maybe a little bit off balance – we call them funny-body throws, where all of a sudden you’ve got to kind of drop down and rip one side-armed. You’ll see him step in real early when (Tony) Romo gets hurt in the Eagles game; he gets blitzed and hits a slant for a touchdown.

Drew Brees was confident last week.

Will the process be the same this week as it was last week or would you drag it out till game time?

Considering Brees’ age, begin of the decline, and the Eagles’ weak offensive line I’m not sure how well this would work. If the Saints lose this week to the Dallas Cowboys, they would have to replicate the success of the 1992 San Diego Chargers, the only 0-4-starting team to make the playoffs since the AFL-NFL merger in 1966.