Saints’ Ramczyk slow to recover from knee issue

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Saints coach Dennis Allen said right tackle Ryan Ramczyk‘s knee is not recovering as quickly as hoped after an offseason procedure.

“He just isn’t quite where I was probably hoping he’d be, and really quite frankly, where he was hoping he’d be,” Allen told reporters at the NFL’s annual league meeting on Tuesday. “But … there’s a long time before we kick the ball off, so I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions right now, but we’ll see how it goes over the next three, four, five, six months, whatever that is, before we get to the beginning of the season.”

Ramczyk told reporters in December that the cartilage in his knee has deteriorated, causing him to miss significant playing time in 2021 and 2023 and putting his NFL future in jeopardy.

Allen’s report on Ramczyk’s progress was significantly more cautious than when he spoke to reporters at the NFL scouting combine last month. Allen expressed optimism at that time after Ramczyk underwent a minor procedure instead of major surgery and said he expected Ramczyk to be able to participate in training camp.

However, some of the Saints’ potential concerns were reflected in the renegotiated contract Ramczyk signed on March 12. The Saints didn’t do a full restructure of Ramczyk’s contract like they typically do to open up salary cap space.

Ramczyk already had $6.5 million of his salary guaranteed for injury, so the Saints instead converted $5.290 million of that salary into a signing bonus and kept $1.21 million, the league minimum, as his base salary. Ramczyk, who originally had a $17 million base salary in 2024, will return on a reduced salary if he plays this year.

Allen said the knee recovery “could be” an issue for Ramczyk’s 2024 status, but repeated that everyone will have to wait to see how things play out. That makes Ramczyk’s status for training camp unclear.

Allen indicated Ramczyk, who was on a reduced practice plan last year because of the knee, will at minimum be limited through the early part of the offseason program, as will veteran defensive end Cameron Jordan, who underwent a procedure on his ankle this offseason.

“At the combine a few weeks ago I was feeling a lot better about [Ramczyk’s injury] and yet I don’t know that I’m seeing as much progress as I was hoping to see at this point,” Allen said.

“But here’s the cool thing, we’ve got plenty of time. No different than what we were talking about with Cam and being a veteran player, and probably not utilizing him necessarily a lot during these OTAs and minicamp. I would see the same thing with Ram too. I think we’re just going to have to wait and see how that goes as we go through all the offseason and as we get into the training camp aspect.”

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