Saints place right tackle Ramczyk on injured reserve

The New Orleans Saints placed All-Pro right tackle Ryan Ramczyk on injured reserve Saturday.

Cameron Erving was signed to the active roster to replace Ramczyk, who is now done for the 2023 season.

A cartilage defect in his knee threatens the 29-year old Ramczyk’s career.

Ramczyk’s contract situation would cause further cap woes for the Saints if he were to be forced to retire, as USA Today details:

Right now, he’s got a salary cap hit counting for north of $27 million in 2024. If the Saints release him outright they would take on more than $32 million in dead money. Their most realistic path forward would be treating his retirement just like they did Drew Brees’ and Malcolm Jenkins’: reducing Ramczyk’s $17 million base salary to the veteran minimum (in his case, $1.21 million) and processing his release as a post-June 1 cut, spreading out the remaining payments from his signing bonus over the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

Ramczyk missed the last two games before being placed on IR.