New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

The standing-room-only crowd that lined the practice field at the Advocare Sports Performance facility here Saturday morning was disappointed at the relative lack of star power in the Black & Gold scrimmage.

No Drew Brees, who sat out the scrimmage with a strained oblique muscle.

No Champ Bailey, who was sidelined with some form of top-secret, mystery injury.

And no Jairus Byrd, who is still recovering from offseason back surgery.

A few fans voiced their dejection to each other in the stands. But once the action started, their dismay quickly disappeared. The Saints' roster is bursting at the seams with young talent and several of them put on a show Saturday as the club zipped through its first full-contact, game-like session of camp.

The NFL largely is a young man's game. A player reaches his prime early, usually from his second to fourth season. The sweet spot for an NFL player usually is anywhere from age 23 to 27. And the Saints are loaded with these guys. It's the age when you finally know what you're doing and are still able to do it.

Twelve of the Saints' 22 starters in the 2009 Super Bowl season were in this age range along with punter Thomas Morstead and special teams captain Courtney Roby. The average age of the Super Bowl team was 27.7, according to Pro Football Reference. Last year's squad was 26.6. And this year's squad could skew even younger.

Of the 90 players on the Saints roster, 56 are between the ages of 23 and 27. Eleven of them are projected starters: Terron Armstead (23); Byrd (27); Rafael Bush (27); Junior Galette (26); Jimmy Graham (27); Akiem Hicks (24); Mark Ingram (24); Cameron Jordan (25); Tim Lelito (25); Patrick Robinson (240: and Kenny Vaccaro (23). Several others - Victor Butler (27); Travaris Cadet (25); Josh Hill (24); Khiry Robinson (24) Kenny Stills (22); Nick Toon (25) - are expected to play regular contributing roles.

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Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

And he left out John Jenkins, Glenn Foster, Corey White, Kevin Reddick, Tyrunn Walker, Rod Sweeting, Marcus Ball and perhaps Derek Dimke.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

No Champ Bailey, who was sidelined with some form of top-secret, mystery injury. UM!!!!

We have some talent.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Just to name a few.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Pierre Warren.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Wait Byrd is out again?

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

he's been limited since he's came back, they held him out of the scrimmage just because...

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Is anyone worried about Byrd being healthy for the season. Or is it too early to start this type of thinking?

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

not me; he participated in the team drills later in the week...

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Yeah, I'm not worried yet either. If he misses the preseason games, then I'd worry.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

And Payton mentioned that they'd bring him along slowly just to be safe.

No worries.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Not worried at all and no need to start thinking it at all.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Byrd did not and does not have an injury. He had a disc that was putting some pressure on the spinal cord causing bruising, which causes pain. It could have been handled with medication, but they decided there was plenty of time to permanently correct the situation by enlarging the opening in the disc, thus eliminating the irritation forever. According to my physical therapist (I tore a bicep a few months back), it is a fairly common procedure with basically a 100% success rate. He said that Byrd would simply need to get back into game shape and the back would no longer be an issue at all.

So you see, Byrd is perfectly healthy already, he is just getting back into peak physical condition.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

My guess is they don't want him at full go until his physical conditioning is back to 100%. Throwing him into full participation right now is just asking for some sort of muscle pull or strain.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Sounds about spot on, the minor procedure he had most likely makes the muscle around it tender and easily strainable until its fully healed

One reach for a high pass or overstretching would strain the muscle pretty easily, like what's been said - Minor surgery, wasn't necessary but why not eradicate it altogether when we had the appropriate time frame to do so!

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

"--Vaccaro, a faster, rangier version of Roman Harper at safety. On Saturday, he flashed his jaw-dropping athleticism, running down and then throwing down Jimmy Graham from behind to save a touchdown then smashing Khiry Robinson in run support with a tackle so violent it broke his helmet."

This brought a small tear of joy to my face

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Who Dat.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Wow Vaccaro ran down Jimmy from behind! Id like to have seen that. No doubt Harper couldnt. Id like to see Vaccaro race Harper because their combine 40s were very similar.

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Watch the video I posted on the Brandin Cooks is making serious noise Thread, the video on there shows vaccaro tackling Jimmy and its pretty sweet

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

Cut Brees and our average age will drop!

Re: New Orleans Saints roster brimming with young stars poised for breakout seasons
 

As would our average wins per season.