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(Mike Triplett)

From the outside looking in, the New Orleans Saints’ offseason has probably seemed a bit hectic.

The Saints have been full of surprises, from the big-name acquisitions of Jairus Byrd and Champ Bailey to the big-name departures of Darren Sproles and others.

And based on reactions from fans and national analysts alike, the biggest head-scratcher of all has been the fact that the Saints keep adding ammo to the roster despite a tight squeeze against the salary cap.

But none of these moves have been made on the fly.

General manager Mickey Loomis insisted last week that just about every move the Saints made was part of a calculated plan.

“It’s not a process where all of a sudden there’s somebody [available] and you decide, ‘Hey, let’s go do this,’” Loomis said while speaking with reporters at LSU’s pro day.

“We have a short-term plan and a long-term plan,” Loomis continued. “And we come into each offseason with 19 or 20 or 25 different things that we want to get accomplished. And you just kind of go down the checklist. And obviously things come up that are unexpected, and you have to react to those. But for the most part, it’s a plan and an execution of the plan.

“So I would say it was kind of business as usual.”

When asked how many of those items the Saints have hit, Loomis said, “We’ve hit a lot of them. We always do. We don’t hit every item, but we hit almost all of them.”

The Saints are actually in great shape now with the salary cap after agreeing to a pay cut with defensive tackle Brodrick Bunkley last week. They’re now $3.6 million under the cap, and they probably don’t have too many more expensive purchases left in their shopping cart.

The Saints still have some noteworthy tasks left to complete. The biggest is signing tight end Jimmy Graham to a long-term contract extension, but Loomis insisted that there is no immediate pressure to get that done yet. Graham's franchise tag figure is already counting $7.035 million against the Saints' salary cap, so they don't need to clear out any new cap space for him.

The Saints also need to find a new starting center after letting Brian de la Puente get away in free agency – though they like second-year pro Tim Lelito’s potential as a candidate for that role.

And there are a few other positions where New Orleans needs to get younger, including receiver, but most of those needs can be filled through the draft.

As Loomis suggested, we won’t know until the fall whether or not the Saints’ plan worked out. But so far, at least, everything is going as planned.

“I feel like we’ve executed our plan well,” Loomis said. “Whether that’s a good plan or not remains to be seen. But we feel like it is.”

Mickey Loomis: New Orleans Saints' offseason going as planned - ESPN

dizzle88

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saintsfan1976

Check, check, check...

Marlboro Man

I really didn't expect much action from the Saints this offseason. Probably because of all I read about our cap situation. When I heard of Byrd coming on the market, I talked to a friend at work about him because we had done so well with Jabari. My friend really thought highly of him but was kinda put off by a supposed injury history issue. I looked around, admittedly not too hard because of work, but didn't see anything like what my friend told me about. I had this feeling in the back of my mind that we might look into signing Byrd. Then, I heard we had a visit and I got more excited because from all I'd heard, Byrd was one of the top 3 FS's in the game. Still, I didn't think we could afford him. Oh yeah, I knew we could make some moves and some cuts but still I didn't think we could do it. Then to my surprise, we did sign him! Right after that signing, I started looking at our needs and how his signing affected our team and our draft strategy and it was just crazy how much his signing affected our team and our draft strategy. For everyone thinking we needed this or that and that it was pretty cut and dried as to which way we'd probably go, now everything was skewed. Now none of our division foes really know exactly what direction we could go in, shocking. Now, signing Bailey is basically a stop gap move to help coach up our younger CB's, he still has enough left in the tank to hold down our Nickel back position better than anyone currently on our roster. Not only that, but if or should I say when we pick a CB in this years draft, and I think it will be in round 1, who better to learn from for a year or two. What we paid for Bailey really helps us with our cap and gives us more value than what is being perceived. I was just wowed by ML and SP once again. They just come out of nowhere with these moves and the impact to the team is just incredible. Where I was expecting a ho hum offseason, a player acquisition frenzy has taken place and turned what would have been a boring time of year into an exciting time of year. You think RR is excited??

Rugby Saint II

I agree that this is an exciting time. From the get go all I heard was about the salary cap restrictions and that we would be lucky to resign some veterans. Somehow Mickey keeps producing some more magic dust.

Danno

If you remember it was said that we'd have to cut some popular players and restructure others in order to sign these key players. And so far Jimmy only counts as 7 million, not the 10 million we offered or the 12 million his agent demanded.

We did just that.

QBREES9

Very cool.