Everything Must Go?
 

What do you think? Sell all our valuable assets? (How much would it suck to see Cam Jordan on another NFL team?)
Who should the Saints trade and get something respectable in return?

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Nope. Nope. Yes. Nobody.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Well that all depends. Are we rebuilding or not? Our past off season suggest we aren't.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Fire sales don't often work in the NFL like they do in MLB. The trade deadline comes too early in the season. Especially this year where is a lot more parity than normal. There are not enough teams that feel they are a few pieces away from contending and willing to go all in. Trades like the CMC/49ers are a rarity. Painful as it might be, rebuilds in this league are more gradual and occur with teams slashing payroll in offseason due to non-guaranteed contracts. Teams won't want Michael Thomas because he's injured; Kamara because of the legal situation.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Less than year 2 AD (After Drew). Do you really believe that this team is that dismal that we need to sell off 'all our valuable assets' to right the ship?

A few issues with that philosophy:
- You still have GM and management in place who are playing 'kick-the-can' with the salary cap. If you want a reset and retool, it doesn't make sense to pawn off players when our front office, as well as the coaches
need to be flushed too.
- Will the fans support gutting the team for a rebuild knowing we have so much talent to replace? How much time will it take to be competitive? Currently, butts are still in the seats. That would most likely change with a sell off. Folks are NOT going to pay their hard earned bucks to watch 2nd and 3rd tier talent. Ultimately, Ms. Benson isn't going to be happy with stadium revenues dropping off.

Just my two cents.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

I wouldn’t pull a fire sale but there is a few I’d be willing to part with. JW, AK, ML, and MT. Then start TH for the rest of the season to see what we really have.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

I think rather than a fire sale, I think behaviours have to change.

Loomis keeps us in cap hell every year, which was manageable when Brees and Payton led the team, but they don't anymore.

Loomis has to change his behaviour and stop mortgaging our future. If that results in some veterans walking or being traded, then we probably saved some money.

Next, DA needs to get the team an identity, all this BS he spouted in his first press conference is laughable now. He said teams would be unable to match our intensity, The only thing we are doing that's "unmatched" by another team, is the rate we are turning the ball over.

Finally, if Pete C isn't strong enough to call the offense out for being awful, then we need someone who will.
Payton demanded a level of play, players were scared to disappoint him.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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!

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

The Patriots got rid of many good players in the process of winning 6 super bowls. Managing the cap often does make sense. Getting younger with more upside on the roster often does make sense. You can't take a formula that won 6 rings and say it can't even possibly make sense. Also, we don't even have to get rid of good players. We can get rid of arguably bad players who would incur a cap hit to get rid of now but will free us up to get more actual good players later, get rid of Peat, Mathieu, Smith, Landry and Thomas if they never play.

While it seems to make sense to have as many good players as possible at all times, the salary cap and timing effect things. If you accept having 70% of the talent of other teams one or two years, you can often afford to have 130% of the talent a later one or two years, and time your window. If you live in debt to the cap like we have been doing, you often end up with 90% of the talent you could have every year, because you lack the tools to get out of bad contracts like Peats and Hills.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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

Another thing to consider is that for 2023 a Kamara suspension is very likely and he is a key part of our offense. Also unless there is a Payton trade, which is no guarantee at all, we won't have a first round pick to contribute. And Jordan and Davis will be a year older. So does maxxing the cap and avoiding the tough cap hits that will help us in the future really make sense to try to 'win now' in 2023? I would rather watch a young underdog team in 2023 attempt to shock the world than try to keep all the veterans and watch a bunch of brittle old men try get healthy at the same time knowing cap hell is still ahead.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Explain how Shaheed is more motivated than Thomas?

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

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.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

I've stopped reading your ramblings. Sorry.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Did you look at the cap hits for cutting the players we couldn't trade? I'm thinking it will be too costly to pay several of those players not to be here.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Gonna look even worse with the draft picks we give up year after year. Only speculation but might have gotten some really good players. Payton liked to showboat on draft day and Allen ( who's not in the same league as a coach as Payton) does too. I've never been a fan of a 2 for 1 deal. Projections are just that, projections, never going to hit on the way we did it. Most of the time it's a fail.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Most of the time ALL draft picks are a fail. It's the nature of the draft. However, one way of thinking is that moving up in a draft statistically increases the odds of landing a starter quality player.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Just another piece of info…according to this:

https://amp.foxsports.com/stories/nf...g-chiefs-49ers

The Saints are/have been in top 5 of injured teams. Strangely enough Az is rated worse than the Saints. But they got their #1 WR back for the Thursday game. Imagine if that would have been Thomas back and not Hopkins? Anyway just another piece of info. Not saying it excuses anything about the performance. It would have been nice to see what would have happened with the Allen team we wanted to see with Landry, Thomas, Olave as WRs and Lattimore and Adebo in the d backfield. I knew not having CGJ was going to hurt. But it seemed unavoidable.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Agreed. It's not excuses, but it is one of the substantive reasons. I see substantive reasons as something unavoidable, outside of one's control. Injuries are unavoidable. Bad calls by incompetent officiating is unavoidable. Having one's opponent get their #1 WR back just in time for your game is unavoidable. They are substantive reasons for hinderance of success. On the other hand, I see excuses as reasons, as well, but avoidable. Pre-snap penalties are avoidable. Missed tackles are avoidable.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

So that's your opinion, because the fact you actually don't know any of this shows your flawed analysis.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

AG I've come to realize there's no rationalization with these people who can't stand MT. He obviously pissed in their Cheerios. What's funny, is none of them seem to understand anything about his injuries. I've been dating a physician since June. I've got her watching Saints games now even though she's an Eagles fan. I've discussed the MT situation with her and shown her posts on this board. Her response to most of the stuff she's read here are "IDIOTS!"

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

I've uttered that same word more than once when reading the same stuff, shawnky. :D

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

I can’t imagine why an Eagles fan would want to watch Saints games this year. Oh wait. Maybe your girlfriend is excited about the top 5 pick.

With all your understanding of injuries please give me all the examples where a player was largely ineffective or absent for 2.5 years and then came back to being a consistent producer. If you had a coworker who was on disability for the better part of 2.5 years with a string of various ailments, would they have to piss on you for you to question their imminent return to full time work?

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

No. I would understand that their injuries were totally out of their control and I would accept them back with open arms while looking forward to their continued contributions just as before their time missed.

You do realize (probably not) that Thomas still leads the 2022 Saints in touchdown receptions after returning from the first injury, right? I'd call that being largely effective.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

On the injury perspective, I get that we are down quite a lot of starters and that other teams are dealing with the same thing. The point where it changes however, is that this is nothing new for the Saints.
This amount of injuries is about par for the course when it comes to this team, didn't we have the most players on IR last season or something? Or the team that recorded the most changed players due to injuries?

So yes, whilst other teams are injured as much as the Saints are this season, the Saints have been this injury riddled for years, whereas other teams have only really started experiencing it this year.

I do hope we are able to find a decent starting caliber QB in the draft somewhere, to build around.
The QB's on this roster aren't the future.

As for the missed tackles on defense, that was happening with the Starters out there too, so that isn't an injury thing.
I love that Kamara has spoken up, but it worries me that it took an RB to do it after 7 weeks, and not the head coach.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

In all fairness please don’t lump all people that have issues with Thomas in the same “pissed in their cheerios” group shawnk. Their are the extreme views like bako’s, but then their are those like me that have no problem with him being on the team and really would like him to be on the field playing, but have legitimate issues with some of his past actions and descisions and wonder if there is carryover.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

What is extreme about my view that a player that has only played 10 of his teams last 40 games cannot be relied on to produce consistently in the future? What is extreme about feeling his not answering Paytons calls, delaying surgery, fighting teammates, and posting cryptic tweets is negative? Are those all positives? I dont hate the guy. I don’t think he can control the injuries. In fact I think the opposite. He can’t control them. So generally a player who misses 30 of 40 games is probably not going to ever be the same. Its how hundreds of careers end for every one career that bounces back. Relying on Michael Thomas is the extreme view. Moving on is the realistic one.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Blah, blah, blah.

:rolleyes:

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

In other words, they feel that he "pissed in their Cheerios". I believe that's exactly what shawnky's talking about.

Personally, any player can piss in my cheerios as long as he comes back and and puts up three TD's every two games. Then again. I don't eat cereal.

:D

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Blah blah blah blah

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

And just because you feel that way, doesn't mean others have to also.

I'm one of the ones thats annoyed at the lack of availability from Thomas over the past few years. When a large portion of our cap, is going to a guy thats missed 30 games over the past 2.5 years, I think it's more than acceptable for fans to not be best pleased about that.

Especially when he's a player that could really help this team.
I thought he was a lock for the hall of fame before that contract, now I'm wondering if he'll ever be available for a run of games.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm pissed that he hasn't been available, as well. But, the big difference is that I am not pissed at him at all like others seem to be. I am pissed at the "football gods" and the rash of bad luck.

It is not the player's fault that he is injured. Anyone would be a fool that believed that he isn't wanting to be on the field right now more than they are wishing for the same. Don't believe that he hasn't blamed those same "football gods" for screwing him over.

I am pissed that Brees got injured when he did. I am pissed that any of our players get injured. But I am never pissed at the player themselves for something that they cannot prevent.

That's also what pisses me off. Others directing their piss-off-ness at the wrong target.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Just really noticed this. What does his contract have to do with any of this? His contract is pedestrian compared to other WR's now. Contracts are driven by the cap, which is in turn driven by the broadcast deals. He was producing as the best WR in the entire league. There's no reason why his contract should be an issue.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

Nope, you've misconstrued what I meant.

When I say before that contract, I'm saying that soon after he got that contract, he then started having injury issues and has missed a ton of games since.

So I thought he was a lock for the hall of fame before the injuries / the new contract.

Re: Everything Must Go?
 

1. Coaching
2. Injuries
3. Left side of the offensive line.
4. Lack of a consistent pass rush.

I don’t identify a lack of talent on the roster…just a lack of availability and the inability to utilize the talent effectively. How they haven’t realized Taysom Hill is always the answer in the red zone is beyond me. Why Shaheed hasn’t played more offense is something I can’t answer. They actually have the speed with Olave, Shaheed, and Kevin White to really gash teams with rub routes and double moves. Do we see it? Nah.