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.
