What do the New Orleans Saints envision their future looking like? Their moves this offseason haven’t resembled the team we’ve known for most of a decade. After their fruitless pursuit of Deshaun Watson, the Saints pivoted to doing a lot of waiting and seeing. They’ve signed a couple of free agents to near-minimum salaries. Sure, they acted quickly to sign a replacement in Marcus Maye knowing that Marcus Williams was leaving in free agency and that Malcolm Jenkins was retiring, and they also pivoted to Jameis Winston after Watson spurned them.
But any sense of urgency to address their greatest position of need has been hidden behind the scenes. New Orleans started the offseason with one of the NFL’s worst depth charts at wide receiver, and they haven’t done much to shake it up. They brought back Deonte Harty and Tre’Quan Smith but balked at Marquez Valdes-Scantling’s contract demands and have been steadily passed over, one by one, as other free agents exit the market to sign elsewhere. If the plan was to build around Winston, the Saints are quickly running out of ways to upgrade his supporting cast. They may have to put all their eggs in one basket and hope they make the right draft picks.
For once, New Orleans has salary cap space to spare; the latest estimates from Over The Cap and Spotrac put them at between $19.5 million and $21.3 million in unspent money. If you ask general manager Mickey Loomis, and some have, he’ll tell you that he wants the team run more conventionally — maybe more comfortably — than fans have grown used to.
Loomis was asked about the team’s salary cap management by NewOrleans.Football’s Nick Underhill, and responded: “Managing it more traditionally? Yeah, ultimately, that’s the goal. But I think this: when your team is in a position of — man, you’ve got this window of opportunity to win a championship, get to the playoffs and do some damage, your tendency is put your chips on the table. We’ve seen a number of teams do that and have success. So, yeah, that’s the position we’ve been in for quite a while and so we’ve kicked that can down the road. But you know, at some point, we have to pay it.”
That describes more of a soft reset than the fire sale some observers around the NFL suggested when Sean Payton stepped down as head coach. Between Payton’s wanderlust and the sun setting on Drew Brees’ career, Loomis was pressured to maximize resources year after year to build the best team possible. It worked, and the Saints won more games than almost anyone from 2017 to 2020, but they’re in a different space now and it’s time to acknowledge that.
So why isn’t Loomis leaning into that philosophy? If he’s looking to absorb some big cap hits these next few years and get the books back in order, fine, that makes sense. It’s the smart approach with the cap about to skyrocket once new broadcasting rights money is injected during the next year or two. But why aren’t the Saints approaching other facets of business as intelligently as they are here?
I’m talking about compensatory draft picks. New Orleans went decades without receiving any comp picks because they were too active in free agency for their own good: only teams that lose more players than they gain qualify for comp picks, and Payton’s all-in approach led to the Saints always being active spenders. That finally changed a few years ago, with the Saints receiving five comp picks over the last two drafts (two of those coming through the NFL’s minority candidates development policy after Terry Fontenot was hired away as a general manager, it should be noted).
For a brief moment it looked like the Saints would be getting two more valuable comp picks in 2023. Marcus Williams and Terron Armstead each left in free agency on deals averaging more than $14 million per year, which projected New Orleans to receive two additional third rounders. That’s huge considering how well the Saints have drafted in the third round lately (finding starters there like Alvin Kamara, Trey Hendrickson, Alex Anzalone, Tre’Quan Smith, Adam Trautman, and Paulson Adebo since 2017).
But then the Saints wiped out one pick by signing Marcus Maye. Which, fine — that’s a step down from Marcus Williams, but the contract isn’t a bad value, and the Saints needed at least one veteran safety after taking so many losses at the position. You can argue that’s worth the value of a third round pick, assuming Maye plays well and doesn’t miss too much time from a DUI suspension that’s been hanging over his head for a full calendar year. I don’t agree, but you can make the argument.
The decision to sign Andy Dalton and lose that other third rounder is unforgivable, though. It’s baffling. Yeah, the comp pick process is dumb — signing Dalton to a one-year, $3 million deal shouldn’t have any impact on Armstead leaving on a five-year, $75 million contract. But it does, the game is the game, and the Saints have to be aware of that, and they’re acting as if they aren’t. They could have waited to sign Dalton or another backup they pray will never get on the field until after the comp pick cutoff date (the Monday after the 2022 NFL draft, May 2). Instead, at best ignorant of the timing, they moved to sign Dalton anyway.
Why? No team would have traded a third round draft pick for Dalton outright, but that’s essentially what the Saints did here. It’s a frustrating misuse of resources. The argument all along was that if Armstead is not re-signed, at least you’ll get great compensation for losing him. Instead all the Saints got is one year with a backup quarterback. For a team that knows the league’s collective bargaining agreement better than anyone, for a team that has worked so aggressively to navigate the salary cap and zig when others zag, this was a really weird missed opportunity.
And that brings us back to Loomis’ comments. If it’s time to pay the piper and lay low for a couple years, operating more conventionally or traditionally to cultivate a healthier salary cap situation, doesn’t it make sense to lean into that and be mindful of other ways to help yourself out? By timing free agent signings to where you can add a player you like without costing yourself a nice draft pick next year? Instead, the Saints come off looking sloppy or even negligent.
Yeah, fans like to say the team doesn’t care about comp picks — but the team didn’t care about the cap, either. That approach is changing. Why isn’t their approach to the draft changing, too? They should be just as aggressive in stacking up draft picks to spend on cheap talent as they were in opening up salary cap room. It’s really tough to square the idea that they don’t care about comp picks when the Saints’ best rookie last season, Paulson Adebo, was someone they acquired because they had enough comp picks to package in a trade to move up for him. There will be other players like Adebo available in the next draft cycle, and the Saints aren’t doing themselves any favors by failing to load up with resources ahead of time to go get them.
But, hey. It’s early. A lot can change between now and then. There are other shoes to drop and other Saints free agents who could be signed away and free up a comp pick or two. At the end of the day, we’re working with projections and educated guesses. Maybe things don’t go like we expect and the Saints still get awarded a good comp pick next year. At this point, all we can do is hope.
