What will the New Orleans Saints do at running back? It’s one position they weren’t able to really address this offseason, with the only new addition being undrafted rookie Abram Smith out of Baylor – who joins a lineup behind Alvin Kamara featuring a late-career Mark Ingram, career special teams player Dwayne Washington, and NFL journeymen Tony Jones Jr. and Devine Ozigbo. The non-Kamara players there combined for just 418 rushing yards in 2021, so yeah, there’s room for improvement. Especially if Kamara is suspended for multiple games following an arrest in Las Vegas early this year.
But where could the Saints turn to find help? Proven, NFL-quality help? With free agency and the draft behind them, their best bet is to work a trade with another team. And Nola.com’s Jeff Duncan reports that they’ve done just that in reaching out to a number of teams to gauge interest in cutting a deal. No new arrivals to New Orleans are expected at this time, but as training camps kick off around the league and teams get a better idea of the state of their depth charts, some dominoes will start to fall.
Duncan suggested six teams as potential trade partners with the Saints, given their depth at the position, so we took a deeper look to see which players could be a plausible match with New Orleans. We’ll worry about the specifics of various trade packages and positional value another day. For now, here are our thoughts on each of those teams and their players under contract: