The Dude

We all know our cap situation is horrible and we all know Loomis is partially to blame and I am in no way trying to excuse him. Thinking back, way back, we will say when Payton first got hired there was a meeting. In this meeting there was Loomis, Payton, Benson, and the rest of the top FO brass. Someone asked the question "what do we need to put us in the best position to win NOW and give us a real shot at a Super Bowl. After some thought Loomis says we need to get this person, this person, this person, and this person and I will find a way to make the numbers work. Everyone knew that it may not be a viable long term plan and it would come back to bite us in the ass eventually but it WOULD put us in a position to compete. Everyone agrees it is worth it if it brings us a Super Bowl. At that point we had not ever really won anything.
We all knew it as fans. I have seen scores of posts by some of you for years and years about how this day would eventually come. At the time it didnt really matter because we were in the middle of Super Bowl contention. Hind sight is 20/20 but if someone asked me if I would take one Super Bowl in exchange for the following 10 years of suckage I would have taken it in a heartbeat.
Everyone knew what Loomis was doing. Basically sold the soul to the devil for the big pay off. We all got what we buy tickets to see, a competitive team that was fun as hell to watch.
No matter what happens this offseason we can rebuild and we can get back on top. It may be under a whole new regime, then again it may not. It may take a few years, but good teams not named the Patriots have down periods, its just part of football.
It was fun while it lasted but I have no doubt we will knock Carolina from their high horse in another year or two.
Anyway I am rambling but just a thought.

VegasSaint9

I dont think thats exactly how it went down, but we cant coach players into becoming studs on the defensive side of the ball, most of these contracts are to vets from other teams where they excelled. Byrd, Lofton, Hawthorne, any of them aside from like Keenan Lewis you name em. Or to guys that look like they will be stud d lineman for us. Sedrick Ellis, Will Smith (he was good for a time but his contract was ridiculous), then Junior, and thats just the last 4-5 years. Thankfully Cam has paid of for us AFTER the fact of receiving his deal. Bad drafts, and inability to coach players has screwed this team over. The cap is meant to be used, we have used it in ways that ideally should have worked for us because we had an aging HoF QB in his prime. Better to go all in than not in that situation. Had we been able to coach up some young draft picks to be serviceable we would be in a great position right now.

hagan714

cap blows when you chase a ring that you never catch.

CharityMike

Loomis does not pick players. He is a GM. When will people get it through there head that Mickey is the numbers guy and the guy the hires and fires coachs. The blame should be put on our head coach. He is the one pulling the strings and Mickey is just doing what needs to be done to make it work.

Now you could argue that he let it get out of hand by just doing what Payton is requesting. I see the conversation going more like: Ok coach, who do we need to keep. Coach says player x etc. Mickey says ok, i'll crunch the numbers and see how we can make this work. What free agents are we interested in, player z etc. Mickey goes to work with talks with agents and getting players in for tryouts.

Loomis is one of the best GM's in the league. Blame the latest crap crop of players on the coachs.

Danno

To an extent, yes blame the coaches. But the coaches are going off of the scouting reports from the Player Personnel department.

Terry Fontenot - Director of Pro Scouting (he handles the free-agents)

Jeff Ireland - Assistant General Manager/College Scouting Director (he handles the draftees)

This is the 1st year Ireland handled the draft for us. Personally I think this is the best draft we've had since 2006.

lumm0x

The original poster is not wrong in the fact that we all know we sold our long term cap souls to get that ring and maintain a shot at more.

I said it at the time and it still rings true. This team never needs to win another game for me. They got me the one that mattered most and every future win is gravy. I still want more but I won't forget that one game ever.

It is time for a re-tool and what hangs in the balance is whether it's Loomis and Payton that are on hand to perform it.

The Dude

I'm not saying loomis picks players. I guess instead of saying "this guy, this guy, and this guy" I should have said he could pay this much, this much and this much. Or someone said we need this and that and Loomis came up with a financial plan to make it happen. It was kind of a hypothetical statement anyway.

Barry from MS

Our anemic drafting since 2007 & developing talent since 2009 have a lot to blame for this. Blame the scouting department, who was fired a half decade too late. Blame some of the coaching staff, as some have been mailing it in for a few years now.

The bling from that ring made a few folks lay-zeee. It happens. But they shouldn't have been allowed to hang around and infect the rest of the staff & players.

Danno

The problem with the 2016 cap falls on Junior Galette. We have 14 million in dead money, 12 million because of Galette.

I understand why we had to cut ties, and sometimes you just get screwed either way.

2016 was supposed to be the year we got out from under the cap woes. Junior's shenanigans simply pushed it back another year.

But even so, a restructure of Brees and a few others will likely get us under the cap enough to sign some "quality" free agents.

I just hope we target the Greer, Lewis, Fujita types and not the high priced tier one guys.

Rugby Saint II

This FO used to pay big players big money and fill in with middle tier free agents. It seems we have been having to add impact free agents the last few years and over paying for them because our draft has not produced talented players who can stay on the field. In order to fill the roster we had to rely on a ton of UDFA's and forced them to get playing time way too early.