Honestly I don't see the issue being lack of talent or playcalling. I see it as execution and discipline. As diz here points out it is behaviors that need adjusted. It doesn't matter if the perfect play is called every time if the execution sucks. It doesn't matter if the player has all of the talent in the world if the discipline and fire isn't there to use it.

The roster is full of very talented players. Trying to get rid of good players makes no sense whatsoever. As someone else pointed out here the NFL isn't like MLB. You can't wipe the slate clean and start anew with a fresh roster. MLB has a deep farm system. The NFL has only what you have on the roster and whatever is available in free agency and the draft. There's no promise of collecting a talent pool as good as we have right now for years, if at all.

First I want to see what we look like once we start getting back some of the key pieces that have been missing. Word is that Thomas could be back as early as this coming week. Penning could be a couple of weeks away. Winston, Landy, and Lattimore have ten days to rejoin the active roster.

I read that Kamara addressed the team after the game and made it clear the effort was not there and everyone need to start playing like the Saints he knows. I am coming around to the idea that the problem (aside from the rash of injuries) is with the motivation from the top.

Here is a link and screengrab from spotrac.com regarding the team’s status for 2023 contracts:

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/cap/

I’m no cap expert. But it seems there are 8 players with Dead Cap hits in the 50-20 million range. Another 8 are in the 10-19 range. It goes from there. This money (to my understanding) is going to count against the cap next year weather or not these guys are on the team. So, it seems kinda hard to see these guys getting traded. Lattimore is over 50 million!

Only Lattimore and Ram would be very hard to absorb the hit. According to this we owe Michael Thomas $28 million next year if we keep him vs only $25 million dead cap if we cut or trade him so its actually a savings, and Shaheed is cheap and seems more motivated. Plus there are options like post June 1 cuts or asking players we could cut to take pay cuts.

What I really don't want to do is sign Peat, Thomas, Hill, Landry, Mathieu, etc to restructured extensions that make them Saints through 2030 in order to get under the 2023 cap and make room to bring in JJ Watt, OBJ, Matt Ryan / Tom Brady, Julio Jones, Bobby Wagner, and Ezekiel Elliott as free agents while trading all our draft picks this and next year to move up for a raw DE Or LT who will get hurt in preason and go on the IR giving us no rookies. That would be the Loomis playbook, try to be the oldest team in the league and get $ 100 million over the 2024 cap by restructuring to win it all in 2023 with the senior tour.

https://overthecap.com/salary-cap/new-orleans-saints

Explain how Shaheed is more motivated than Thomas?

Since joining the team Shaheed has never made a cryptic tweet, refused a phone call from the coach, delayed a needed surgery, or fought a teammate in practice. He doesn't have much money guaranteed so he is motivated to prove something to get paid.

None of that says that Shaheed is more motivated than Thomas. Just more of your biased bullcrap. Thought so.

Just so you understand, this is a football discussion forum not a criminal court. I am not saying I can prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Michael Thomas is so unmotivated he should go jail for the rest of his life. I am giving an opinion that he may not be especially motivated. There is a phrase 'young and hungry' that predates this message board. I want the team to get younger. Everything I listed, while not proof for a criminal trial, backs the message board opinion that Shaheed is more motivated. If you think employees who fight at work, post cryptic messages about work on social media, and don't return the bosses phone calls are motivated, go start a business and hire employees who do that. They will be ready available at negotiable salaries even in this tight job marker. I won't be able to prove those employees are not motivated in a court of law, but I won't be an early investor.

Your opinion. Simply that. My opinion is that not only does Thomas have ten times the talent of Shaheed, but he has the motivation to be great (see his NFL record breaking numbers). Just because a couple of injuries have got in the way I do not see that motivation being any less. If anything, I would expect his motivation being greater than ever.

His motivation won't matter if he can't stay healthy. JJ Watt has a lot of talent too. Honestly Terrelle Pryor had a lot of talent. I don't think Michael Thomas is the most or least motivated player. I view things like fighting teammates and going AWOL when surgery is needed in the offseason as negatives but I would be willing to overlook them if he had produced recently. But I think with 2.5 years of nagging injuries, his magically staying healthy point forward just isn't the most likely scenario. So I would rather trade him if we can, or cut him in the offseason if his health issues continue to 3 years without good production and nobody will trade for him.

Beyond the issue of his health or motivation, I also don't view high investment in the wide receiver position as a winning formula for building a championship contender. The Steelers won for years by letting star receivers walk. The Patriots through their championship years bought low and sold high on wide receivers and did not give any record breaking type deals to receivers. Thomas' current contract could actually be cheap if he got healthy with the escalation of the market, but he is not healthy, and if he got healthy he would want a new deal pretty soon, before we are I think able to contend at a championship level. So that is the other factor to me. Maybe Panning somehow comes back from his foot injuries and becomes the next Lane Johnson. Maybe Werner needs a long term deal and is lighting it up down the road. Maybe Lattimore gets healthy. Maybe we find a franchise QB and need to lock them up. I want to spend the money at those positions. I want to let the Antonio Browns, Wes Welkers, Randy Mosses, Sony Michels, and Leveon Bells walk, because I see more successful franchises do that and I see it work.

We should rebuild. This is not our year. Could we sneak into the playoffs? It's not impossible. But on the off chance we did, we are not winning 4 straight games against winning teams like the Eagles, Cowboys, KC, or Buffalo and getting a ring for Dennis Allen, its not happening.

Having said that, the Cleveland Browns - Hue Jackson model does not work. It's not worth getting a top draft pick to establish a gutter reputation and low standards that you can't shake even when you have the assets to win. At the same time, the Mickey Loomis model of maxing out the salary cap ever year and forcing yourself to extend players you would rather cut in order to kick the can down the road does not work either. Tampa Bay won a ring by savings up some salary cap space for a couple of years by not going all in on winning now with Jameis, then spending their powder when they had the QB in Brady to go all the way. The Patriots won for many years and sure Brady helped, but undeniably another part of their formula was being willing to trade expensive vets, let some walk, avoid overspending on most aging players, and avoid overspending at the RB and WR positions in particular while relying instead on affordable ensemble casts. Even the Rams, who I view as an anomaly in other ways with their strategies, did take the cap medicine to get rid of their bad contracts with Goff and Gurley before they won their ring. I think the ideal rebuild scenario is to have great coaches and a great GM so that even when you purge expensive veterans you still hope to go about .500, maybe 6-10 at worst, and to be a contender mid season, even with a team stripped of most high prices veterans and relying on some up and comers with a chip on their shoulder making a name for themselves. If you say go out and lose, you can't easily unsay that when you think you have your franchise QB.

So I would say that we need to rebuild and to do that, its valuable to trade aging vets or injury prone players for value and/or to straight up cut bad contracts with no value. We are about equal with the Falcons and Panthers in our team quality this year. If they reload for the future and we try to win now when its not realistic, they will dominate us for years to come.

Here would be my list:

Keep:
Werner
Olave
Ramczyk
CGJ (should have, he was part of our core for the future)
McCoy
Other young healthy players with value.

Consider trading for the right value (they are good but expensive and injury/suspension prone and there are high odds they will not be good in 2-3 years when we are contending better):
Kamara
Lattimore

Trade these vets if they want a shot at a ring this year, keep them if they want to stay, important to do the right thing to be a class organization as long as they don't want a cap busting record deal:
Cam Jordan
Demario Davis

Fire Sale or Cut if No Value, in approximate order of possible value:
Michael Thomas
Marcus Maye
Jarvis Landry
Taysom Hill
Molasses Badger
Jameis Winston/Andy Dalton
Payton Turner/Tearer/Sprainer/Twister/Strainer/Fracture
Andrus Peat
Trequane Smith
Dennis Allen
Mickey Loomis

Don't resign unless very little guaranteed money, consider trading if there is an offer:
Marcus Davenport
David Onyemata