Originally Posted by BakoSaint
(Post 1007105)
I don't know if Deion Sanders would be a good or bad coach but I do see a few issues with the Saints hiring him.
1. The most impressive aspect of his resume is 'turning around' troubled college programs, but he turned them around by bringing in a few big name top talent players that otherwise would not have considered those programs. He essentially did this at no cost to those universities since there is no salary cap or draft picks in college. In NFL terms, for those colleges, it is like if Deion Sanders came with two 1st round picks as a free bonus. It is not so clear to me that his coaching was especially great. If you let me bring Patrick Mahomes and Micah Parsons to the CFL, I could probably turn around a losing CFL franchise. He is probably and alright coach, maybe great, but for now recruiting is his main edge, and beyond his own son he recruited one big name player.
2. Deion Sanders recruiting edge will be hard to translate to the NFL, especially to the Saints. There is no recruiting of college players, at least top ones, and the Saints have no more draft picks than the average team. The Saints have the least cap space in the NFL to recruit free agents, and spending big in free agency would be a disaster that would force the Saints to restructure and extend aging players like Carr, Jordan, Mathieu, Davis, Kamara, etc to get under the cap. If the most Sanders can do is convince Tee Higgins to pick the Saints over the Falcons for similar money, he just helps us nuke our salary cap situation and bet the farm on winning now, which ain't happening. And if we ever change course, fix our cap, get young, and truly compete, Higgins will be too old to contribute then. For Deion's recruiting edge to translate to the NFL, he would have to do something like convince an NBA star to come play TE for cheap, and that ain't happening.
3. Deion Sanders has said he will only come to the NFL if he can coach his son at QB. The Saints would probably have to trade 3 1st round picks to trade up for Sanders, especially if we hire his dad as coach so everyone knows we have to trade up for him. This would create and awkward situation with Carr, Rattler, and Sanders. I want to cut Carr, but that would mean a year of no big free agents. So would Sanders want to coach his son, on a team with one of the worst olines in the league, fragile wide receivers coming off injury, no first round picks for years to improve oline and wr, and no free agent money?
4. I want the Saints to cut Carr, start Rattler, take the year off of free agency to fix their cap, and perhaps enjoy a very high first round pick in 2026 along with a much much better salary cap situation. The problem is with Deion and Shedeur this situation is all thrown off. If we trade most of our picks present and future to get Shedeur, instead of help for Rattler and Carr, we are likely to lose a lot of games in 2025, which would be ok if we had a 1st round pick. But if we trade up for Shedeur and cut Carr, we won't have a 1st round pick, and we will likely lose a ton of games with Shedeur behing a depleted aging roster and still raw, so then we will end up perhaps giving another team the #1 overall pick in 2026 which we trade three 1st rounders to get Shedeur. That would be a disaster. The other side of the disaster is if we do the same but keep Carr. Then we have Carr as the ultimate lame duck of all history, not merely a caretaker, but a caretaker waiting to be benched for the coaches son that the franchise sold the farm to acquire, leading a depleted team that had no draft picks to help him. In this situation perhaps we win a few more games because Carr is probably better than a rookie, but perhaps we dont because of the crazy situation that would put Carr in mentally. So in 2026 our trade partner gets maybe the #1 overall pick, maybe the #10 overall pick, but regardless our cap situation is still screwed up, cutting Carr will nuke it but we can't pay a lame duck $50 million, so we go into 2026 with Sanders at QB supported by no 1st round pick, a catastrophic cap situation, etc.
If Deion Sanders comes to the NFL, it would make sense for him to go to a team that has more salary cap money, higher/more picks, no expensive QB on the payroll with a massive looming dead cap hit, and at least above average assets at WR or oline to help Sanders be successful.
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