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Nothing fires up an NFL fan base like the offseason signing of a big-name free agent.

Many New Orleans Saints fans would have been over the moon had the team inked Jimmy Graham or Ndamukong Suh after pursuing both a couple of months ago. Smartly, the Saints set a ceiling price on each player and Graham and Suh hopped on with the Packers and the Rams, respectively.

Building a roster by overspending on street free agents costs plenty of dollars and lacks plenty of sense for a successful formula of the modern NFL. The more a team can lean on younger players -- a.k.a. cheap labor -- for a longer period of time, the better off that team will be on the field.



It seemed clear while watching a Saints organized team activities session a couple of days ago how far the Saints have come in landing and leaning on young players as the team's recipe for success.

Five of the players in one seven-on-seven drill with the first unit were either on a rookie contract or an undrafted rookie deal: Marshon Lattimore, Ken Crawley, Marcus Williams, Vonn Bell and Alex Anzalone.

And five of the team's primary defensive linemen walk into 2018 still on rookie contracts: Sheldon Rankins, Tyeler Davison, David Onyemata, Marcus Davenport and Trey Hendrickson.

This isn't to say Drew Brees shouldn't rake in a healthy chunk of the salary cap. But Brees' cap number for 2018 clocks in at $24 million. The combined 2018 cap numbers for the following Saints players add up to about $24.8 million:

Peat, $3.6 million
Rankins, $3.5 million
Lattimore, $3.5 million
Davenport, $2.5 million
Ramczyk, $2.0 million
Davison, $2.0 million
Marcus Williams, $1.4 million
Michael Thomas, $1.4 million
Bell, $1.1 million
Alvin Kamara, $878,000
Anzalone, $826,000
Onyemata, $766,000
Crawley, $632,000
Wil Lutz, $630,000
Much of the Saints defense is made up of young players under thrifty contracts. That's not the case on offense. Seven of New Orleans top salary cap figures come from the offense, including five of the top six contracts (Brees, Armstead, Larry Warford, Max Unger, Mark Ingram).

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Rugby Saint II

This sounds like the Patriot way!

Audiotom

Well

We learned from
Browner
Byrd
Dreadful

Audiotom

At first I thought the Saints were crazy for giving away Brandon Cooks

First game we have no deep threat to draw off the cbs
Open up the middle

We score on the draft picks, Ginn Plug and plays

Brandon does well and Patriots flip him to avoid $$$

K Major

Patriots saw what we all saw. Cooks is a good player who wants to be paid like a great player.

Let the Rams over pay for a 9 route guy.

Audiotom

Bill B was always enamored with Brandon's speed

He saw the one year "use him and dump him" role
Wasn't going to pay the big money either


We will pay for Michael Thomas and it will be worth every penny

jeanpierre

Cooks will move you up and down the field between the twenties, but in the red zone, his height becomes a liability...

Michael Thomas, at a strong 6' 2" was able to make Sean Payton realize it...

I really, really like Cooks and hated to see him geaux, but Damn-it-Sean and the Mickster gave away two draft picks for one...

The Good Lord redeemed that gaffe when Ramczyk fell to us with the recovery pick and we were able to move the fourth pick up to get Hendrickson...

neugey

Perhaps one upside of the high dead cap amounts that have been incurred during the Payton-Loomis era is that it has forced them to be more shrewd and try to steer away from bad contracts to begin with.