Meant to post this: these are the full snap-weighted age rankings for each team this season on offense, defense, and overall. Saints were the oldest team in the league, Lions the youngest. pic.twitter.com/PYVVZkvdH1
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) January 19, 2023
Sheesh. ESPN’s Bill Barnwell found that the New Orleans Saints fielded the NFL’s oldest roster during the 2022 season, which doesn’t bode well for their fortunes in 2023. Ending the year with a 7-10 record and an old, unathletic roster doesn’t exactly spell a recipe for success — and the fact that most of the coaching staff will be returning for 2023 isn’t exactly a silver lining.
Barnwell adjusted each team’s average age for snaps played, which reflects the players who were on the field most often. And with the Saints relying so heavily on players over 30 like Andy Dalton (35), Demario DAvis (34), Cameron Jordan (33), Taysom Hill (32), James Hurst (31), as well as 30-year olds like Bradley Roby, David Onyemata, and Tyrann Mathieu, it does a lot to raise them higher in these rankings. Other venerable backups like Chris Harris Jr., Daniel Sorensen, and David Johnson also saw heavy snap counts late in the season.
But this is going to happen when the Saints whiff on highly-valued draft picks. They’ve cost themselves critical depth by missing on early-round picks spent on backups like Payton Turner, Ian Book, Zack Baun, and Rick Leonard over the last four cycles. Trotting out a series of greybeards to man the spot vacated by last summer’s bizarre C.J. Gardner-Johnson trade also didn’t help matters. Players selected in the top four rounds like this group should be making an impact and contributing on Sundays, not suiting up for other teams or watching the game in sweatpants.
New Orleans must nail its 2023 draft class if it wants to get back to being a competitive team. They can’t keep asking older players like Davis, Jordan, and Mathieu to pick up the slack. The good news is their 2022 rookies offered plenty of promise. Here’s hoping for more of the same in April.
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