Yes, 2025 is still a long ways away — but it’s important to keep an eye on the future. That’s how the New Orleans Saints operate, and so does every other NFL team. The league office announced key dates for the 2025 offseason this week, highlighting the 2025 NFL draft and the start of free agency.
Here’s what we learned:
- Feb. 18 to March 4: This is the window for teams to use the franchise tag (or the less-common transition tag).
- March 12: This is the start of the new league year and free agency signing period.
- April 24-26: The three-day 2025 NFL draft, which will be held in Green Bay.
We can infer some other things, like the real start of free agency being March 10. That’s when the legal tampering period opens, where teams court free agents and discuss contracts, but deals may only be agreed to, not signed. Every year a couple of players renege on those handshake agreements so nothing is guaranteed until pens go to paper a few days later.
Will the Saints use the franchise tag in 2025? Maybe. They’d like to avoid it given their complex salary cap situation, but they have several high-profile players headed for free agency after the 2024 season: Paulson Adebo, Pete Werner, Chase Young, Willie Gay, Juwan Johnson, Payton Turner, and Rashid Shaheed (who will be a restricted free agent, making him ineligible for the tag but easier to re-sign).
No one expected the Saints to use the franchise tag the last time they brought it out, at least not the summer before. It certainly wasn’t expected to be such a difficult decision between tagging Marcus Williams or Trey Hendrickson. Letting Hendrickson walk away in free agency (while tagging Williams only to fail to re-sign him later) has turned out to be one of Mickey Loomis’ biggest blunders, but going into his breakout season with the Saints he had just 6.5 sacks in three years. We’re in the same position now that we were then. Maybe one of those players we just listed performs so well in 2024 the Saints can’t afford to let them go in 2025.
