The rundown: Could a pay adjustment be a win-win for Derek Carr, Saints?

Some final notes from the combine…

Decisions to make: The Saints have to be under the cap by 3 p.m. next Wednesday. That means that there are going to be some big decisions coming in the next week, and we should start seeing some movement shortly.

Some of the bigger ones the team will need to make center around Derek Carr, Cam Jordan, Taysom Hill, and Tyrann Mathieu. The early guess is that all of them will be back, or there’s at least a desire to work things out so they can come back. The Saints need to trim a little more than $40 million to get cap compliant.

But you also never know. There are some new people in the building, and we’ve never seen them operate. We can usually do a pretty good job of estimating how people are going to react to things and operate in certain situations.

We are still learning Kellen Moore and his staff. So, this next week could contain a few surprises. But by the end, we’ll have clarity on where everything stands.

A change in pay for Carr: The more and more I think about it, the more and more it feels like the most mutually beneficial thing for the Saints and Derek Carr would be for him to take a reduction in pay.

Think about it.

If he gets cut, he’s not getting $30 million from another team on the open market — not when there are so many other veteran players available.

If the Saints cut him, they won’t be able to make any other moves in free agency, and their roster is screwed.

There seems like an obvious win-win here.

I know Carr told reporters he wouldn’t do anything to lower his pay. But I think once you get down to it, there’s an obvious path here that can benefit both sides. If the Saints can lower Carr’s $40 million commitment, it’d allow them to spend a little more.

Tackle or guard: Will Campbell had an incredible combine. He weighed in at 319 pounds and ran a 4.98 40-yard dash. Some team is going to see him and fall in love with him. As they should.

But Campbell is an interesting case study for the Saints. They typically want their tackles to have 34-inch arms. Taliese Fuaga pushed that limit last year with an arm measurement of 33.125 inches, but that number wasn’t wildly outside of their standards. Will Campbell’s arms are 32.6 inches long. He has 9.5-inch hands. The Saints like hand measurements around 10.25 inches (Fuaga was 10.125).

Will Campbell’s measurements say he’d be a guard for the Saints. Guards don’t get drafted in the top 10 — not usually, at least. Not unless you see them as a Hall of Fame talent. Any other year, I’d say Campbell would get categorized as a guard for this team. But with new people and new points of view in the building, maybe there’s more leeway on some of these measurements and how players are viewed.

QB buzz: The Saints met with Cam Ward and Shadeur Sanders at the combine, which is notable mostly because of the position they play. Teams can meet with up to 60 players at the combine, and they’ll meet with more than 300 guys by the time the draft process is said and done.

These are quarterbacks, though, and you pay attention to quarterbacks. And I think it’s fair to say the Saints are in that market, and you certainly aren’t going to draft a quarterback you’ve never met with or talked to or put up on the board. So, that at least means there’s a possibility. Having said that, my guess is that the Saints are more interested in Ward than Sanders. I’m not sure I’d see Sanders being the pick at No. 9. Just my feeling.

Configuring the staff: I think one of the reasons it took so long to finalize Doug Nussmeier’s role is because the Saints were possibly looking at getting two people in on the staff instead of just one, and titles and roles and all that needed to be figured out if certain things aligned. I’m sure there are 100 different things that almost or possibly happened, or that were considered. But there were a lot of moving parts and all of the maybes or possibilities are certainly fascinating. In the end, I think the Saints got the right mix of people on offense.

T.J. Paganetti is someone that is going to be fascinating. I heard from a few people this week that he was overdue for a bigger role. Now, he has one.