Whew: there was the active rush to beat the buzzer we’ve been looking for at the annual NFL trade deadline, with a crowd of players changing teams. The Atlanta Falcons traded wide receiver Calvin Ridley to the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Minnesota Vikings acquired Detroit Lions tight end T.J. Hockenson, and the San Francisco 49ers shipped out running back Jeff Wilson to the Miami Dolphins, among a host of other moves around the league.
But the New Orleans Saints were one team that didn’t rock the boat. Sitting at 3-5 on the year so far with some reasons for optimism but little salary cap space or future draft assets to use in a trade, so they didn’t have many options. Torching everything and trading all of their best players wouldn’t have brought back much in the way of draft assets or salary cap resources (in many cases, it would have cost the Saints more to unload those contracts at this point).
