You don’t pay players like Kamara and Thomas with the production they had then you can guarantee players won’t want to come in free agency or stay here past their rookie contracts. You have to take care of your guys. The huge knock on New Orleans was Benson didn’t want to pay players. New England got away with that because they had the greatest QB/Coach combination of all time. People aren’t clamoring to go to NE now because NE has the reputation of not taking care of their own. You’re dealing with people with emotions and wherewithal, not robots. How do you not pay Michael Thomas after the production he gave us? That would be outright disrespect and a message to everybody in the NFL, if you ain’t Drew Brees then **** you.

New England has been letting star players walk or trading them since before Brady and Belicheck had so many rings, when they were just a team that got lucky and won a couple. The Steelers have let many stars walk. The 49ers let Montana walk when they had Steve Young. I don't think its super insulting to trade a player because you have a budget. If some company hired me, trained me up to be worth 20 million a year with their great system when i just started out trying to make the team, and then said we want to train someone new to stay on budget so pick your new city to earn 20 million from a new employer, I would not complain. If an owner wont pay to have a winning team, that is one thing, and free agents may not want to lose. But if an owner makes smart decisions to win, free agents should like that. We don't need the big name free agents anyway, we need to build through the draft and get the under appreciated free agents who are hungry to win.

They didn’t win their first Super Bowl until Brady got there. Their sustained success was directly correlated with that combination, because as we saw this year, Cam couldn’t work with less like Brady could. The Steelers had stability at Quarterback and TRULY dominate defenses. The 49ers let Montana walk at the end of his career with Steve Young in waiting. They didn’t move on from Montana and Rice and leave Steve Young with nothing to work with.

There’s other ways to stay under budget. As far as the draft, that’s a crap shoot. You hit some, you lose on most.

Most importantly, if I take a job in New Orleans and settle down and start trying to raise a family there because you gave me a long term deal then you say you wanna trade me I’m not going to have good **** to say. Especially when my production was down because of injury. It’s not a good look.

In Thomas case he may want out so it could be mutual. It would be dumb to get rid of him otherwise.

He just played through serious injury trying to get Brees a Super Bowl before he retires. I think maybe we should stop speculating on what these guys want. Mike doesn’t seem shy about saying what he wants.