Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
Who will be the Saints’ biggest pending free agents in 2024? The team is already taking action to sign some of them to extensions before they reach the market:
Who will be the New Orleans Saints’ biggest pending free agents in 2024? The team is already taking action to sign some of them to extensions before they reach the market, but the majority of their 35 projected free agents are going to have the opportunity to see what’s out there from other teams.
So which of their pending free agents could be drawing interest next year? Who has the most at stake going into the 2023 season? Let’s highlight some names to watch closely in the fall:
The Saints won’t get where they want to go with too much dead weight. 5 recent draft picks who need to step up, via @DillySanders:
The New Orleans Saints filled a lot of holes in the offseason, addressing a weak defensive line and bringing in some more offensive weapons. However, there are some spots on the roster that still need to see improvement from young guys that they couldn’t pull the trigger on replacing yet.
Some players just haven’t met expectations. The team’s early draft picks in the last couple of years have been heavily criticized, outside of Chris Olave who impressed immediately as a rookie in 2022. It has been a case of players not yet living up to the high potential that they were drafted for over players that would be a little bit safer of choices. The Saints have bet on their ability to help coach guys up and meet their potential, but too often fallen short of that goal.
This team won’t get where they want to go with too much dead weight. Here are five recent early-round draft picks from the Saints that really need to improve in 2023:
Would the New Orleans Saints still pick Cesar Ruiz in a 2020 NFL draft do-over? Bleacher Report explored that exact scenario, via @DillySanders
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The ability to be able to go back in the past and change a draft pick is an idea that would excite most fans, especially with some of the recent New Orleans Saints first round selections. However, in the eyes of Bleacher Report’s Kristopher Knox, one recent selection would stay the same. While re-drafting the 2020 NFL draft, Knox stated that the Saints would stick with offensive lineman Cesar Ruiz if given another chance. Here is his reasoning:
Taking an interior lineman in Round 1 doesn’t generate headlines or much draft-day excitement. However, Ruiz has provided the Saints with good, reliable play on their offensive line.
Ruiz appeared in 15 games with nine starts as a rookie and performed well right out of the gate.
Ruiz certainly didn’t have a great start to his career in New Orleans, and while his play has improved greatly, taking him in the first while given another chance would be extremely puzzling. I could see New Orleans still wanting him on day two, but not at all in the first round.
If New Orleans would have wanted an offensive lineman still, Ezra Cleveland or Damien Lewis would have made much more sense. Though, in this scenario, it would make sense to jump on another skill position player you knew would work out at a better value. Brandon Aiyuk still being there on the board would be a much more intriguing option.
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High-profile players like Michael Thomas and sleepers like D’Marco Jackson and Smoke Monday are among 7 New Orleans Saints returning from injuries in 2023:
The New Orleans Saints have an interesting mix of high-profile starters and sleeper talents returning from injuries in 2023. We’re not counting new additions and rookie draft picks like running back Kendre Miller (meniscus) or others dealing with health challenges (such as tight end Foster Moreau), only players who were on the team last year and who have been brought back for the upcoming season.
Some of them are going to vital to the team’s overall success. Let’s recap each situation with organized team activities on the horizon:
Cameron Jordan and Cesar Ruiz are among the players the Saints should sign to contract extensions before training camp, via @DillySanders:
The NFL training camp begins in July for the New Orleans Saints and the rest of the league. One of the main focuses up until that point will be ironing out some important contract extensions for players in the last year of their deals.
The Saints currently have 26 players on their roster that will have expiring deals next year. The mission will be figuring out who the most important players will be, in terms of securing their spots for the future and what price point you want to have these players at.
Here are the three most important players that the Saints need to prioritize:
He needs a big year! #ProBlue
New Orleans Saints right guard Cesar Ruiz played for Michigan during his collegiate days from 2017-2019 before entering the NFL draft following his junior season.
The Saints selected the Michigan center with the 24th pick in the 2020 draft and New Orleans opted to move him to guard. Ruiz has started 40 out of 46 games played with the Saints since his joining the team. This past season, Ruiz started all 14 games before being sidelined with a foot injury.
Entering his fourth NFL season, teams can opt to use their fifth-year options on the 2020 NFL draft selections, but according to Ian Rapoport, the Saints are declining the option on Ruiz.
The #Saints are not picking up the fifth-year option for OL Cesar Ruiz, source said. He now heads into a contract year for New Orleans.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) May 1, 2023
If the Saints would have opted to use their option on Ruiz, the club would have paid $14.175 million to Ruiz for 2024. Since the Saints are declining his option, the former Michigan center with be a free agent after the 2023 season, unless New Orleans can agree to long-term deal with the NFL guard.
Ruiz has seen vast improvemnt since his first season with the Saints, so a new deal wouldn’t come to a surprise if the two sides can work it out.
During his Michigan playing days, Ruiz was a two-time All-Big Ten center and had 31 career starts.
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Saints decline fifth-year option for right guard Cesar Ruiz, making him a free agent in 2024. He’s now entering a contract year:
The #Saints are not picking up the fifth-year option for OL Cesar Ruiz, source said. He now heads into a contract year for New Orleans.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) May 1, 2023
Well that’s disappointing. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that the New Orleans Saints are declining to exercise the fifth-year option for right guard Cesar Ruiz, their first-round pick in the 2020 NFL draft. He’ll now become a free agent in 2024 along with left guard Andrus Peat, whose contract was reworked earlier this offseason.
It’s not too surprising. Ruiz was a liability through his first two years in New Orleans, and though he made impressive strides last season he ended the year with a foot injury and needs to show he can rebound from it to continue playing at a high level.
Take that with the cost involved — if the Saints had picked up Ruiz’s option they would have been on the hook for more than $14 million in 2024 — and it makes more sense to see if a long-term contract extension at a lower rate isn’t the better move.
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The Saints’ 2020 draft class is entering a make-or-break season in 2023. Cesar Ruiz, Zack Baun, and Adam Trautman can still change the narrative, but they’re running out of time:
Much of the attention on the New Orleans Saints’ 2020 NFL draft class has centered on right guard Cesar Ruiz, and for good reason — the former first-round pick struggled mightily through the first two years of his career before turning things around last season, and now he’s going into what could be a career-year with plenty of momentum behind him, despite an unfortunate season-ending injury in rearview. If the Saints don’t choose to exercise his fifth-year option after this year’s draft (which would cost them more than $14 million in 2024), he’ll be a free agent next year.
His other 2020 draftmates don’t have the luxury of a fifth-year option ahead of them, and they also haven’t quite met expectations up to this point. At the time of the draft, general manager Mickey Loomis and the team’s decision-makers like assistant GM Jeff Ireland told us they were going for a quality-over-quantity approach by drafting just four players, and trading up for three of them — linebacker Zack Baun, tight end Adam Trautman, and quarterback-turned-tight end Tommy Stevens. That strategy was met with skepticism at the time, and history hasn’t exactly justified the idea there.
Stevens was waived and kicked down to the practice squad within six months, and the Saints cut him for good 199 days after they picked him. Baun has been limited to special teams for most of his Saints career. Trautman hasn’t developed as hoped and the team was actively looking for his replacement in hosting Foster Moreau on a free agent visit.
So the way things stand right now, it’s hard to look at the 2020 class as anything but a failure. The Saints either took the wrong approach, picked the wrong prospects, or had the wrong vision in mind for them. Draw your own conclusions there.
That’s not to say there isn’t a scenario where things turn around. If Ruiz continues playing well and earns a long-term extension with the Saints, that does a lot to salvage the 2020 draft for New Orleans. So too would Baun taking a step forward in the role Kaden Elliss flourished in last season. He excelled as a pass rusher in college but the Saints overcomplicated things by making him play out of position and off the line of scrimmage. Elliss lined up closer to the ball and experienced great success because of it. Maybe that’s the proof-of-concept the coaches needed to let Baun do what he’s done best.
But that’s still just two players out of an entire draft class, and they each need to meet those expectations. Whether they can change the narrative or not is undetermined. Let’s hope they can go the distance. These players haven’t met expectations yet, but there’s still some time left on the clock for them to get there.
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We’re updating the New Orleans Saints depth chart at guard after Calvin Throckmorton re-signed for 2023. Where he fits in the lineup this season:
The New Orleans Saints brought back offensive guard Calvin Throckmorton on a one-year deal for the 2023 season, which is a good move for their depth along the offensive line. But how does this change their depth chart at the position? Starting guards Andrus Peat and Cesar Ruiz are both under contract for 2023, and Throckmorton is just one of several backups in the mix (with a few new players joining up early this offseason), along with some players retained from last year’s practice squad.
So how do they all stack up? Here is the 2023 salary cap hit and 2022 snap counts for each of the guards currently signed on with New Orleans:
PFF says the Saints’ biggest draft mistake from the last 5 years was trading up for Marcus Davenport. It’s tough to argue with that:
There’s no other way to look back on Marcus Davenport’s five years with the New Orleans Saints than as a disappointment. Between injuries and inconsistent play, he hasn’t lived up to the hype as a player they invested multiple draft picks in acquiring. After playing in 67 of 87 possible games, including the playoffs, Davenport has yielded just 21.5 sacks and 7 forced fumbles, with 26 tackles for loss. By year’s end he was playing behind former undrafted free agents who had outproduced him.
And the decision to trade up for Davenport was cited as the Saints’ worst draft-day mistake in the last five years by Pro Football Focus draft analyst Mike Renner, who gave the Saints a lot of credit for their success scouting other college prospects. But he can’t overlook their big miss on No. 92:
“The Saints have owned the single-best draft hit rate in the NFL over the past five seasons, bar none. Even the Davenport pick is difficult to call a miss when considering his performance when healthy. It’s a tough pill to swallow, though, given that Green Bay walked away from that draft after the trade with the better player (Jaire Alexander) and the Saints’ 2019 first-rounder while Davenport failed to make a consistent impact.”
The Saints have caught some heat for errors in the draft’s first round in recent years, whether it’s trading up for Davenport, betting big on center-guard convert Cesar Ruiz, or passing on better prospects in favor of Payton Turner. So it’s a good thing they’ve done well in the draft’s other rounds. Second- and third-round picks like Erik McCoy, Pete Werner, Paulson Adebo, and Alontae Taylor have all played heavy snaps. The jury is out on one of last year’s two first rounders, Trevor Penning, but Chris Olave is an award-winning step in the right direction. Hopefully the Saints can start a trend of productive early-round draft picks after a couple of misfires.
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