Given the state of his roster, general manager Mickey Loomis’s rant on the early records of some legendary head coaches as it relates to his current head coach, Dennis Allen, may not go down well in the scheme of things.
The Saints enter the offseason in a familiar situation: with $330 million on the books, they are roughly $80 million over the 2024 cap with $300 million on the books for 2025 and $210 million inked to 2026. (all numbers from Spotrac). That would be one sort of problem if New Orleans was a Super Bowl contender, but the 2023 Saints couldn’t win the division in a downtrodden NFC South, and with Derek Carr locked in at quarterback, this team is not going to be meaningfully different in 2024.
To further complicate matters, the Saints have a 1st-rounder (14th overall) and 2nd-rounder (4th overall), then they don’t pick again until the 148th overall pick, eliminating the possibility of flipping their fortunes with a draft haul like the one they pulled in 2017.
The alarm bells have been going off since Drew Brees left this team; Sean Payton’s decision to briefly retire and start over in Denver probably should have set off alarms with ownership, but it appears that Loomis will be allowed to drive the car straight off the cliff. The question is no longer whether Loomis can flip the roster for 2024; it’s how much damage he is going to do in the process of continuing to chase these short-term gains.
You Get A Guarantee, You Get A Guarantee, Everyone Gets a Void Year!
Taysom Hill, who is an interesting utility player, is set to have the 3rd-highest cap hit at tight end next year, narrowly edging out Travis Kelce. If the Saints were to cut Hill, they would be stuck with a dead cap hit of nearly $17 million.
It is utterly preposterous, and unlike recent years, when the Saints have maintained some semblance of competitive balance, this roster appears to be rigged for detonation.
The quarterback room, which has $10 million in void money allocated to Jameis Winston, consists of Derek Carr and Jake Haener, a notable concern given Carr’s injury history. He will be playing behind an offensive line that is slated to be even worse than it was in 2023; the left side of Andrus Peat and James Hurst departs with void numbers on the cap ($13 for Peat and $3.5 for Hurst), which could mean that Trevor Penning, the former 1st-rounder who was benched midway through the season, could be forced back into the lineup. Right tackle Ryan Ramczyk, who bore little resemblance to the player who commanded a deal at $25 million per year, could rebound and form a strong three-some with center Erik McCoy and right guard Cesar Ruiz, but that leaves two question marks and no depth behind the starters.
New Orleans still has Chris Olave at receiver, but Michael Thomas, who has void years running out to 2027, could be a cap casualty, and the electric Rashid Shaheed is a restricted rights free agent, which isn’t a cap hit the Saints can exactly take for granted.
Running back Alvin Kamara, who failed to hit 4.0 yards per carry, is on the books for $19 million and $29 million before void years in 2026 and 2027, while backfield mate Jamaal Williams, whose most notable moment as a Saint came running up the score in a meaningless Week 18 game, is signed up for two more years at $4.6 million, with void years in 2026 and 2027.
It’s an utterly preposterous way to run an organization. There is one offensive player - Olave - who is producing surplus cap value.
And the defense isn’t much better.
Bets on Defenders in their Mid-Thirties
Defensive end Cameron Jordan and linebacker Demario Davis have been two of my favorite players to watch in the 2010s, and they were the lynchpins when the Saints were among the best defenses in the NFL from 2017 to 2020ish.
However, Father Time catches up to everyone, and the tandem, who are both signed to deals near the top of their respective markets, are not the same forces they once were. After playing 90% or more of the snaps from 2012-2017, Jordan has steadily declined to a career-low 70% in 2023, a season that also only saw him rack up two sacks. Davis is still playing nearly 100% of the snaps, and his counting stats haven’t fallen off, but it can’t be getting easier at his age, and his cap hit of $18 million sets his standard at the top of the league.
Defensive tackle Bryan Bresee, their 2023 first-rounder, played solid ball as a rookie and could build on that, and their second-rounder, Isaiah Foskey, could find a role after being a non-factor this season, but there are few other reinforcements available for the defensive front, which was led by Carl Granderson and his 8.5 sacks last season.
The secondary is in a little better shape, if only because there’s more talent on that part of the defense, but the Saints are putting a lot on Marshon Lattimore, Tyrann Mathieu, and company. With outside cornerback Paulson Adebo, who has been a quality find as a former 3rd-round pick, coming up on the final year of his deal, the Saints would ideally have an eye to the future at the position, but they have too many issues in the here and now to worry about anything that far down the road.
Bad Enough to Pick 1st Overall?
If New Orleans does nosedive in 2024, they need to sit it out a year before they pull the trigger on a rookie quarterback. I don’t care if the next coming of Andrew Luck shows up; whoever winds up taking up over this mess is going to need to show the type of patience that Houston general manager Nick Caserio demonstrated as he navigated the Deshaun Watson situation.
The amount of orange (void figures) on New Orleans’s multi-year Spotrac outlook has no shortage of terrible examples to point to, but given how the rest of the NFL has treated the running back position in recent years, the combined void figure of $7.5 million in 2026 for the duo of Alvin Kamara and Jamaal Williams might do the best job of demonstrating how out of control this has gotten.
I hope this doesn’t come across as me being a Saints hater - I absolutely loved watching Drew Brees play, thought New Orleans was the most talented team in the NFL from arguably 2017-2020, and think it’s a shame Brees and Payton didn’t get a second Lombardi in that window - but at some point, the party has to stop.
Last offseason, we saw the Rams wake up in time to change course and reset with a young crop of players. The mechanics of the NFL are set up so that there is really no other way to do it, but the Saints aren’t operating that way, and it’s sad to see how much it is costing them in future years to field the type of increasingly mediocre squads they rolled out from 2021 to 2023.
Maybe they squeeze a little more juice out of this, but as it stands, I’ve got 2027 circled as the next season that it is realistic for the Saints to be a legitimate contender again, but if Loomis continues to have his way, that date might be 2028 by June.
Early 2024 Projection: 3rd in NFC South (says a lot about the Carolina Panthers…but I’ll need to give that one more thought than I realized)