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It’s a day that ends in Y, so there’s a national football writer criticizing the way the New Orleans Saints work around the salary cap. Pro Football Focus analyst Brad Spielberger ranked the Saints’ cap outlook as the worst in the NFL — trumpeting the exact same conventional wisdom that was wrong when these warnings were sounded a decade ago.
Spielberger surveyed all 32 teams and considered factors like team age, unspent salary cap space, prorated spending through signing bonuses, and draft resources over the next three years to forecast each squad’s fortunes. Because the Saints borrow from the future to improve their roster today, they were not looked upon favorably.
Here’s what Spielberger had to say in putting New Orleans at the bottom:
Saints fans are sick of reading negative headlines about how the team constructs their roster, and they have every right to be. The ramifications are often overblown and the credit card bill seemingly hasn’t come due just yet. However, the fourth-oldest roster in the NFL ranks 20th in our top 51 veteran valuation and 34-year-old veterans Cameron Jordan and Demario Davis rank third and ninth, respectively, on the team in production value.
Another draft class like the 2017 group would go a long way in keeping this train on the tracks, though an abysmal NFC South division should get the Saints back in the playoffs.
So there’s your problem — the Saints simply need to have an all-time great draft class to replace their aging stars with young talent, the kind of crop that comes around once in a generation (which fans hadn’t seen since 2006). It’s that easy. Right?
Jokes aside, poor drafting and developing of talent has hamstrung New Orleans more than any salary cap maneuvering. Missing big on early-round draft picks like Marcus Davenport set the franchise back several years. Davenport’s poor performance meant the Saints had to try and replace him with Payton Turner, who flopped even harder through his first two years, and now they’re hoping a third pick (Isaiah Foskey) can be the answer. And that’s all devoted at fixing the long-term issues at just one position.
We can’t overlook the Saints’ horrific outing in the 2020 draft, either. They talked up their quality-over-quantity approach only to cut one of their four rookie draft picks by midseason (Tommy Stevens) and trade another after just three years (Adam Trautman). A third player from that four-man band, Zack Baun, has nearly been unplayable. Cesar Ruiz was a liability until last season which ended with an injury.
New Orleans’ cap outlook is improving in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, having been stricken harder than most due to the economic fallout and depressed salary cap. If they can at least piece together a couple of average draft classes and stop burning valuable picks on players who aren’t worthy of them, they’ll be in good shape. But as we’ve seen before that’s easier said than done.
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