K Major

BakoSaint -

Solid analysis and dead-on prediction.

I need your thoughts for 2023 I'm genuinely curious of your thoughts on Allen 2.0

AsylumGuido

20-0, Baby!

Who Dat!

K Major

Oh, & I'm nitpicking here but MT overall health (3 games all of 2022) is closer to 3 years now

There are multiple post(s) threads relating to MT but no one seems to talk or report much about his current health.

Only time I hear from Can't Guard Mike is when he has posted a cryptic tweet Here's a suggestion, post more videos out in sunny California cutting on a dime, running a post corner, catching a pass from some high school kid at a random stadium and whatnot.

halloween 65

Want to make a bet with me on that, baby. Same as I proposed to u once before!!

halloween 65

I promise I let him take a hike if I'm Loomy. Draft one young, hungry and cheap with good hands.

BakoSaint

Thanks! I think its too early to make a complete prediction now. Last year I was able to make an accurate prediction in mid-May, after all of free agency and the draft, including I think some free agents who settled on teams after the draft. We are starting to learn where the first round of free agents will land but we still don't know what will happen with the value rounds to come or the draft. We don't know if the Saints will keep Thomas or Peat, whose presence I think actually hurts team morale when other players see guys who don't produce collecting the big checks and taking away their reps in camp.

My early impression is not enough to predict an exact record this early. My gut feeling is that if all else was the same, which it is not, Carr could add 1-2 wins. But those 1-2 wins are not certain. I feel like Carr's career is at a crossroads after 9 years with one team and the hope that a fresh start will be prosperous. If Carr is back to 2021 form he could add 2 wins. But if things don't click, or if the oline relies on Peat and on other oline coming off injury who can't shake their injuries, and Carr gets off to a rough start, I feel he could completely deflate and we could be on the hook for a big contract to Bills Drew Bledsoe or worse, and Carr could even be benched before the end of the year. So I think we need to weigh in the chance of 2021 Carr with also the chance of sub-2022 Carr, with a slight chance of better than ever Carr and a slight chance of Jameis Winston or QB carousel if Carr implodes or gets injured. I think the net of all that is probably Carr adding 1 win, but if the oline relies on Peat and injured players and we dont add quality draft picks or young free agents, I think the chance of 2022 Carr increases, and the net gain I would predict then is nothing, about the same as 2022 Dalton.

Besides Carr, there is also I think some risk of a failure spiral with Dennis Allen. He was a 4-12 coach in the Raiders. His final year he drafted Carr and had renewed hope but it didn't all click and he went 0-4 and was fired. If it clicks, probably Dennis Allen is who he is, and maybe he even improves a little, but its exceedingly unlikely he is ever an elite coach. Elite coaches may start 7-9 or 6-10 but they dont tend to start their career 4-12, 4-12, 0-4, 7-10 after inheriting teams with better records than that in both jobs. I think there is more downside with Allen giving up and losing all confidence and reverting to 4-12 or worse than there is upside of him becoming a better coach in 2023.

For other changes, we have lost Kaden Ellis who was an exciting young player and quality depth who made great contributions. Onyemata was never super exciting but was a solid piece. Davenport was a bust but he had moments, highlights, so I would not pay him $13 million when he was worth $7 million, but I am not sure we will wisely spend the $7 million on another player we saved by him getting overpaid, we will likely spent that on Carr. We have lost a lot of players already and will likely lose more, and maybe not the players we need to lose like Thomas and Peat because the cap voldemort we call our gm structured their contracts so he can always claim it is cheaper on a 1 year basis to keep extending them forever until they are 100 years old than to take the cap hit and cut our losses. I have to see more about what we lose and gain but so far we have lost at least 1 win on losing defensive depth.

Also the Saints are one of the oldest teams in the league. This generally has a bad effect on record going forward. Cameron Jordan and Demario Davis will be a year older. I think this costs us 1 win.

Then there is the competitiveness of our division. The Bucs will be worse. They are also one of the oldest teams, and most over the cap, they lost a good qb and have dubious replacement plans, and and they are going full rebuild. But the Falcons added our best DC, two of our good defensive players, have a young QB, are a young team, and have big money to spend in the salary cap. The Panthers are young and have some money to spend too, and will be adding a #1 overall pick at QB replacing a chaotic merry go round, and will have a coach who comes in as a .500 type guy at least, not a .250 guy like we have. The Panthers are also a younger team than us and will have more young players step up. We only won 2 games in our division last year, both against the Falcons, who did a rebuild while otherwise performing similar to us except head to head. 2023 could be similar except the Bucs could be the team we beat twice while the Falcons and Panthers could sweep us. But more likely we could win 3 games in the division and win less outside the division since we kind of got unlucky in the division and luck outside the division last year.

Losing Kamara for a 6 game suspension could also cost us a win. We could mitigate if we replace him with the right value free agent or draft pick. But I could also see a scenario where the story blows up and Goodell decides to send a message and suspend Kamara indefinitely for an unacceptable violent assault and screw the Saints, and we totally miss on our plan B, and Kamara's absence all year costs us 3 games and puts us at the top of the 2024 draft if we dont give our pick to the Bills or Chiefs first.

I also think its important to remember Goodell has long signaled and hinted to the refs that the Saints are a public enemy and need to be taught a lesson, without anything official on paper that can ever be proven. Last year the refs could take it easy because we were out of serious contender status quickly, and clearly even if we had made the playoffs, Dalton was not knocking out the heavyweights like philly, sf, kc, or buffalo. If we did put it all together and everything was right, as some of you may predict with optimistic 14-3 records with out new HOF QB you may imagine, I think the refs would return to their old 2018-2021 hijinks and hurt us much more than they did in 2022, and no longer would we have Payton or Brees to overcome it, so I think the refs present a ceiling that makes it very hard for highly optimistic scenarios to materialize. We need a loaded KC type team and elite coach to beat the refs and the opponents, not a slight upgrade here and there and the hope that if we win a weak division its anybodies game in the playoffs. Goodell has made it clear to the refs that its not anybodies game in the playoffs, its his game more than ever there.

Much is being made of the Saints having an easy schedule in 2023. However our schedule in 2022 was not so hard, just average. We were in a weak division that I think will be improving with the Falcons and Panthers on the move while the Bucs plummet. And the crowning jewel of difficulty in our 2022 scheduled was the Eagles, who were missing Hurts when we beat them, so our 2022 schedule was probably a bit below average when you consider the Eagles are a much weaker team without Hurts. Overall, I think our easier schedule could net 1 win.

So my current feeling is we won 7 games last year + 1 game for adding Carr +1 game for an easier schedule - 1 game for the rest of free agency so far - 1 game for being one of the oldest teams getting older - 1 game for Kamara's suspension = 6-11. But free agency and the draft are not over yet for us or our division rivals, so time will tell. If we add some quality young healthy pieces on defense, oline, and rb that could mitigate my concerns. I hope we dont add those pieces with trades of future draft picks or overpriced backloaded contracts that will kill us in future years, but if we do I can't hold that against our 2023 record only future records in years beyond. But if we don't address those things well and we bet everything on aging injury prone players and negotiating to bring back Peat, Thomas, and more like them, and spend our draft capital trading up for a raw defensive end we feel could be the next Von Miller in 2027 if his dual ACL repairs work like the community college doctor hopes, we could be very bad. And if the rest of our division continues to make better moves than us that could put us more in a hole. And thats not even counting the chance that we trade Rasheed Shaheed and Peter Warner to the Eagles for 5th round picks. Maybe they want a shot at a ring and are willing to stop talking to the coaches for a week to get one.

mapcow

4 wins
13 loses

get it

saintsfan1976

Too early.

Let's see FA, draft and scheduling play out first.

Put a pin in this until September 1.

AsylumGuido

You're right. I'll wait until September 1st to post ...

20-0, Baby!

Who Dat!

SmashMouth

Don't we need a new thread for 2023 instead of using the 2022 thread?

Someone please create it. I am fixing to close this thread.