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The New Orleans Saints are a team of extremes. There is rarely much middle ground. This offseason has captured their organizational schizophrenia.

After years of loading up on salary and doling out a bounty of doomed contracts and creating a salary-cap monster, they have now swung back in a far different direction, shedding veterans who make too much money and have fallen out of favor and loading up on draft picks. It's not that they had any choice -- this purge was self-inflicted and entirely necessary and born of their own mistakes and a defense that has frankly been historically bad more often than not in recent years -- but it has been nonetheless jarring in its execution.

If nothing else, it speaks to a future that may be murkier than any in the NFL. I wrote very early this offseason about the 49ers and Saints being poised for a quick remake given the way their salary and cap structure played out, and thus far it's been as expected. But that only serves to beg the question -- what's next? And what's next for coach and organizational power Sean Payton in particular.

With the fight for ownership of the franchise -- a literal court fight -- already ugly and bloody between owner Tom Benson and his heirs, and with so much unknown about how this long-suffering team will operate in years to come, and who will truly control the reigns, the timing of the Saints' drastic overhaul speaks to their larger struggles.

As Benson, who has been forced to comply with court-ordered tests on his faculties and ability to handle the daily management of his sports and car dealership empire, has become increasingly hands off in recent years, it's well known in New Orleans how much power and autonomy Payton and general manager Mickey Loomis wield. There are few if any checks and balances from above; Payton and Loomis can more or less do as they please, and they have curried extreme favor with Benson's third wife, who the owner recently made the beneficiary of his teams after stripping it from his daughter and grandchildren.

As Sean Payton remakes roster, big questions arise about Saints' future - CBSSports.com

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