I don't think so, because all that happened after we franchised Brees, who refused to negotiate the previous year even though the Saints wanted to.

Drew (or Condon) decided to play out his contract instead of negotiating a new deal. It absolutely cost us Carl Nicks since we could have forced him to remain a Saint under the tag, or we could have had a more concrete figure in mind to keep him.

We decided it was more important to pay Brees whatever it was going to take than to over-pay for Nicks and risk losing Brees.

So we franchised Brees, lost Nicks and then went to war over the tag issue.

No, Brees wasn't franchised because he was refusing to negotiate that previous season, he was franchised because the Saints were at the time unwilling to pay his what he was worth and he didn't want to have any negotiations taking place during the season. His play during that season proved his worth. Once the season was over was when the NFLPA came into play and asked Brees to hold out for the tag to be applied so they could challenge the league.

But regardless, losing Carl Nicks was not the reason the Saints have not been back. The problem has been and remains to be the defense. Having or not having Nicks is way overplayed.

Thats speculation. It was reported on several sites that the Saints offer would have made him the highest paid QB of all time. Drew decided to play out his contract instead.

Agreed Nicks wasn't our downfall, but there was a significant drop-off from Nicks to Grubbs.