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Orlando, Fla. – This offseason has been anything but stagnant for the New Orleans Saints.

From the emotional releases, trades and decisions to not re-sign valued veterans who’d helped the franchise win 73 regular-season and six playoff games in Sean Payton’s seven seasons as head coach, to the jubilant signing of free agent safety Jairus Byrd and re-signing of right tackle Zach Strief, the franchise has moved at a brisk pace since the season ended.

But it’s a pace that the team expected and anticipated, Payton said Wednesday morning during his media availability at the NFL Meetings in Orlando, Fla. And the Saints aren’t done.

“Every offseason, you kind of head into it with certain goals,” he said. “I think the key component that sometimes gets overlooked is the initial period of time after your season is over with and the importance of grading your own roster.

“I think that starts the process, and then there are always the tough decisions. We’ve had a lot of players win a lot of games for us. This was a year where, it was probably the first cycle of guys in our first draft class in 2006, (like) Roman Harper, and you saw players like (defensive end) Will Smith, (cornerback) Jabari Greer, (safety) Malcolm Jenkins, (linebacker) Jon Vilma – those guys have been really the foundation of what we built. So it never gets easier when there’s change that’s made like that.

“And yet, we were able to bring in a player like Jairus Byrd, we were able to find a fullback (Erik Lorig) that we felt – initially going in, wasn’t even a targeted area – but we felt was a very good football player.

“Signing Zach was important and signing (running back) Pierre (Thomas) was important. We didn’t think we were going to be able to handle all the running backs. It’s kind of an ongoing process and quite honestly, there’s still a handful of players that are going to have value with contracts at this time in free agency, maybe more so than ever.”

Read more: John DeShazier: Sean Payton breaks down Saints offseason moves

saintsfan1976

Still shopping. I love it.

Rugby Saint II

It has been quite the off season..........the most change since Payton took over. With the draft still to come we are really changing our roster.
Now, if he would just get rid of McMahon the special teams would improve drastically.

73Saint

Agreed. I have been wondering when he'd be gone for some time now.

nycsaintfan

73 regular season wins in 7 seasons! Honestly I go back as far as the mid-80's when I could only hope to get scoring updates on Saint games. Then their was the era after Mora in the 90's that were pretty lean. The Ditka era with the trade of an entire draft.

I swear I hope this run never ends! Tough to see Moore and Sproles go, but I'm excited to see the dawn of a new era in Saints football begin sending off Drew Brees with his second ring. Winning never gets old!!

triman

In a word BOLD as always.