Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
The 2014 Saints draft class was a disaster, with all players picked out of town by 2017, including Brandin Cooks and Stanley Jean-Baptiste.
Our 2021 NFL draft countdown marches on, this time reviewing the 2014 Saints draft picks. Let’s get out in front of this: it was one of the worst draft classes of the Sean Payton era, with all but one player washing out of the NFL in just three years; the only pro-qualify talent to persist was their first selection, who forced his way out of New Orleans through a trade before his rookie contract expired. Not great! But here’s how we got here.
Previous draft reviews:
List of players the Buffalo Bills have ever franchise tagged.
In 2021, the Buffalo Bills are not going to use the franchise tag. At the end of the season, Bills general manager Brandon Beane essentially said never say never… but it just wasn’t going to ever happen.
On Tuesday, the Bills reworked center Mitch Morse’s contract to find $2 million more in cap space. Per Spotrac, that move gives the Bills approximately $6.6M in cap space if the upcoming salary cap in the NFL is set at $185M.
The most-likely candidate for the tag this offseason was linebacker Matt Milano. According to Over The Cap, that tag would have cost Buffalo $15.7M.
Beane says maybe but the logic says no.
During his tenure as GM, Beane has yet to use to franchise tag. But in the history of the franchise tag which dates back to 1993, it hasn’t happened much for the Bills, in general.
For those curious, here are the five times the Bills used the franchise tag in team history:
The Saints signed ex-Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston, who threw more interceptions to the team than Taysom Hill has completed passes.
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The New Orleans Saints quarterbacks room now runs four deep, and three of those players can say they’ve already connected on passes with their teammates. While that’s expected of starting quarterback Drew Brees and number-two passer Taysom Hill, it’s a bit surprising to learn that free agent pickup Jameis Winston would rank second out of that group in total volume.
Just, in the form of interceptions rather than typical pass completions. Winston was picked off ten times by Saints defenders during his five-year career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That outnumbers the seven career pass completions thrown by Hill to his Saints teammates, including the playoffs.
If nothing else, that speaks to the amount of pro experience Winston has seen early in his career. The Saints might continue to say that Hill is both the immediate backup and the long-term heir to Brees, but there’s no questioning which quarterback has spent more time on the field running an NFL offense. Hopefully Winston learned a lot from those turnovers.
For the curious, here’s which Saints defenders snagged passes thrown by the former first-overall draft pick. Be sure to file this away for trivia night:
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The New Orleans Saints might be one of many NFL teams waiting for a new CBA to be ratified, erasing a new hurdle in the league’s 30% rule.
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The New Orleans Saints are used to getting creative in their efforts to work around the NFL salary cap, often backloading contracts and relying on crafty salary cap structure to max out their resources every year. However, there’s a chance that one of their favorite tricks won’t be available in the 2020 offseason, unless the league and the NFL Players Association are able to settle on a new collective bargaining agreement.
As recently pointed out by ESPN’s Dan Graziano, “Article 13, Section 7 of the CBA mandates that ‘no player contract extending into a season beyond the Final League Year may provide for an annual increase in salary … of more than 30 percent of the salary provided for in the Final League Year, per year, either in the season after the Final League Year or in any subsequent season covered by the Player Contract.’”
In translation: teams are not allowed to sign players to contracts with a raise of more than 30% in 2020 during subsequent years, though this doesn’t include prorated signing bonuses. According to Over the Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald, this is designed to stop teams from taking an unfair advantage of a potentially uncapped season.
Here’s an example: let’s say that a Saints player is under contract for 2020 on a $1 million base salary, with no other bonuses on the books. If the Saints were to sign that player to a contract extension, the most they could raise his total salary to in 2021 would be $1.3 million. They could still prorate payments (and remain under the cap) with a big signing bonus, but those can only be handed out when ownership has the funds on hand, in cash. For smaller franchises like the Saints, there could be a limit to just how far they can stretch themselves in a year with this added rule in play.
The Saints have circumvented the salary cap in the past with tactics outlawed by this rule; in 2014, they signed safety Jairus Byrd to a six-year, $52.5 million contract that featured an initial salary of just $1.3 million. That figure climbed to $2 million in 2015 and $7.4 million in 2016, climbs of 153% and 569% over the first-year base salary. Strapped for cash again in 2020, the Saints would normally be expected to use this strategy again, but that won’t be an option under the current CBA. Fortunately, it’s not a new development. General manager Mickey Loomis and his staff, headed by salary cap specialist Khai Hartley, have been planning for this.
If a new CBA is not ratified before free agency begins in March, the Saints will face an uphill battle to fit contract extensions (and pay raises) for pending free agents like Vonn Bell and David Onyemata on their books. They also could struggle to work out new deals with players who could benefit from re-signing ahead of schedule, like Alvin Kamara, Larry Warford, and Demario Davis.
However, there’s good news: NFL owners voted to approve the terms of a new CBA on Thursday, which precedes a vote by the NFLPA as soon as Friday. There’s no guarantee that the players will accept these terms right away, but teams are certainly counting on it. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Friday that multiple NFL franchises are poised to make roster moves should the new CBA be approved, which would void this 30% rule. Few teams have more pending free agents than the Saints, so it’s logical to think they may be in that group ready to make changes as soon as they’re given the green light of a ratified agreement.
There are now multiple NFL teams waiting to make roster moves based on the potential of a new CBA. If a new CBA is approved in the days to come, a flurry of roster moves will follow.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 20, 2020
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Here are the best players on defense for Buffalo during the last decade.
The defense has been the stronger unit of the Buffalo Bills over the past 10 years. Defensive coordinators Leslie Frazier and Jim Schwartz have each guided their respective units to top-10 finishes during the past number of years.
As the 2010s close, it’s a natural time to review how the Bills have looked on the defensive side of the ball over the past decade.
Here are the best players on defense for Buffalo during the last decade:
Kyle Williams was a fixture in Buffalo for 13 seasons. During his play in this decade, he led defensive linemen with 396 total tackles and 71 tackles for loss. Tack in 40.5 sacks in 121 games, and you have quite the player for the interior of the Bills line. Williams was named to six Pro Bowls during this time period.
Marcell Dareus is a story of what could have been. In 91 games, he recorded 300 total tackles and 35 sacks. He surely was dominant at times, but he just did not gel with the Sean McDermott regime. Dareus was a two-time Pro-Bowl selection with Buffalo and was an All-Pro with the squad in 2014.
Kyle Williams just caught a pass.
KYLE WILLIAMS JUST CAUGHT A PASS!#ThankYouKyle #GoBills pic.twitter.com/aViBF0sG8M
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) December 30, 2018
