What could free agency bring for the Saints? Also, what is the impact we can expect from some of the new offensive coaching staff?
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 I don't think that they're not going to make a splash this offseason, but I wouldn't be
00:03 surprised if it's only one in free agency. Yeah. I mean, that's how you can get you a
00:07 pass rusher, right? I mean, and you know, Carl Granderson's contract, that's going to be
00:11 automatic product probably as far as the restructure goes. I mean, that's something,
00:15 but you know, you could get a pass rusher and put them at that veteran million, a minimum,
00:20 and then give them a pretty big signing bonus and spread it out however you need to. I mean,
00:25 there's ways you can do it, or if they use that for an offensive lineman, I mean, there's just
00:29 multiple ways that they can use this particular amount of money and just be able to be smart
00:36 about it. Luminomics is what I like to call it. Lumising, if you want to call it that. Lumisbucks
00:42 is the one I saw earlier today. I like Lumisbucks. Yeah. I like Lumisbucks.
00:46 Yeah. Yeah. And so it makes sense. And there's other things that come into play. Restricted
00:53 free agent tags. Those also are dropped too. The tenders, they're two, four, and six. So first,
00:59 right of first refusal is like 2.4, 2.5. So the only restricted free agents the Saints have are
01:04 Lynn Bowden and Adam Prentice. And so usually back in the day, you would be able to tag these guys,
01:12 no brainers. But now with the rising costs of these, it's hard to see that this team is going
01:17 to actually tag somebody. They didn't tag any of their restricted guys last year. So that's
01:23 something else to keep in mind. And then one of the things we should also address here is
01:27 Rashid Shahid, he's an exclusive rights free agent. I know we touched on this, but just a reminder,
01:33 he's an exclusive rights free agent. So that just basically means that he can't negotiate.
01:37 He does anything. The Saints basically make him an offer and that's kind of it. There's no
01:42 negotiating. But we talked about it here. They just need to do right by Rashid, right? Is don't
01:47 give them just some little Olay contract, which I know the team won't do. Give them some type of
01:52 incentive and something, a reward. We've seen it with guys like Jawan Johnson in the past.
01:57 Yeah. Carl Granderson as well.
01:58 We just talked about it. But yeah, it just makes sense. But I've seen some people like,
02:03 are they going to resign Rashid? And it's like, yeah, of course they are.
02:06 Yeah, he ain't going nowhere.
02:07 They don't have a way to not resign them basically.
02:11 Yeah.
02:12 The thing that's really nice about it is that you can do right by him by giving him a two-year deal
02:18 and then pay him above what the exclusive rights tag would have been, or give him a two-year deal
02:23 and pay him above what the restricted free agent tag would have been and things like that. That's
02:28 kind of what they did with both those guys, Jawan, as well as of course, Carl Granderson.
02:32 And then look, Carl Granderson got a whole new contract after that. Jawan Johnson, if he has a
02:36 good year here in 2024, I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a whole new contract after that
02:40 as well. These are guys that they really like. Rashid Shahid is in that category. So I wouldn't
02:45 be surprised to see them find some $2 million deal, excuse me, not 2 million, two-year deal
02:51 for whatever amount of money with some of that money in a signing bonus, kick down the road a
02:56 little bit and all that kind of stuff. Just to be able to say, "Look, man, we like what you do here.
03:01 We're very excited about how the role has grown." And then be able to do good by Rashid Shahid,
03:07 as you said, by doing that. And so it doesn't have to be a five-year deal, a four-year deal,
03:11 or anything like that. If you can get that done, go for it. And if you want to go down that road,
03:14 go for it. I wouldn't agree to that if I was Rashid Shahid. I'm trying to get new money in
03:18 two more years. You know what I mean? But I'll take a two-year deal if I'm him, just as a means
03:23 of the organization saying, "Hey, we want you here." Yeah. Not bad for a guy out of Weber State
03:28 that was undrafted. You know what I'm saying? So that's always a good thing. And of course,
03:33 around this time, you're going to start seeing a lot more of fallout from players like Xavier Howard.
03:39 He's going to cost a whole bunch of money. Hunter Renfro. He's going to be a guy that people have
03:43 talked about this trade and stuff. They're not trading for Hunter Renfro. He's going to be a cap
03:48 casualty. They'll try to. Nobody's going to take on that contract. And I think he's probably going
03:55 to find himself in New Orleans before too long. But again, there's a guy like that. Keep an eye
04:00 on that. Justin Simmons, we saw him at the HBCU Legacy Bowl on Sunday. He's going to be a heavy
04:07 cap hit. And the thing is, what? He didn't have any guaranteed money. So maybe him and Ryan Marcus
04:13 Robinson, they had ties in Denver. I'm not saying he's going to join the Saints, but some of those
04:18 things you got to keep in your back pocket too, to remember that a lot of these players in their
04:21 final years of the contract, they're not going to see that, that figure in teams are just not
04:26 going to pay him that. Yeah. Yeah. He's got, it's over $14 million of his base salary, but like you
04:31 said, none of it's guaranteed. I think, I think probably Denver is going to extend him and keep
04:36 him there. I mean, they would create themselves a pretty big hole at that position if they ended up
04:40 moving on from it. And then if they extend him with the extension, they can drop a salary cap
04:44 hit, especially with no guaranteed money in 2024 and all that. But man, if he did hit the market
04:49 for any reason, I have to imagine that Marcus Robertson would be sprinting his way to Denver
04:53 to drive him back to new Orleans if he needed to, because you know, like you said, those guys go
04:58 go way back. We saw them chopping it up, you know, during the HBCU Legacy Bowl game,
05:02 they have a really good relationship and all that. So if he hits the market, I would, I would feel,
05:07 you know, you know how it goes. This is that season where everybody that hits the market,
05:10 you get the, you get the Twitter mentions like, Hey, is this a good option for the saints? Is this
05:13 a good option for the saints and everything? Justin Simmons don't even ask the answers. Yes.
05:17 Yeah. It's a hundred percent. Yes. Uh, but I don't see him making his way out of Denver,
05:21 but boy, it sure would be interesting. Especially if the saints were to move on
05:24 from Marcus may as well. Like that's a pretty good fit for the system next to Tyra Matthew.
05:28 And then you've got guys like, you know, if you can get Jonathan Abram back behind him,
05:32 you've got Jordan Howden behind Tyra and like, that's a pretty nice setup at what's already been
05:36 the strongest position group for this team and it's secondary.
05:39 Yeah. It's, it's going to be, should the saint sign everybody season it's coming up, you know,
05:45 I got the Emmanuel out about questions and look, the answer is yes. You know what I mean? Like,
05:48 go for it. Like try everything. Yeah. They should be interested in a lot of guys. Now it doesn't
05:53 mean that they should sign everybody and they should fly them out to new Orleans. I mean,
05:58 think about the past several years, they've been tied to some pretty big high profile guys,
06:02 you know, and just hasn't necessarily worked out or this player picked a different team and
06:07 all this other stuff. And so it's not that people just avoid new Orleans, like the plague. I mean,
06:12 people, they, they tried bringing in some of this type, a high type of caliber and stuff.
06:17 And they have, I mean, in, in some aspects, but you know, this is an off season where, again,
06:22 we talked about it last week that this offensive line needs, needs to make sure they, they got the
06:27 offensive staff in place now. So we kind of knew who was going to be there, but they made it
06:33 official. The, you know, only one surprise is bring on a new assistant wide receivers coach.
06:38 But, you know, again, this, this offensive coaching staff, just talking about all of them,
06:43 you know, really Clancy Barone and some of the assistants are the only ones that come back.
06:46 What do you think of, of the staff and is this going to be the, what unlocks this offense
06:53 for more consistency going forward? You sure hope so. And I'm glad that you said consistency,
06:58 cause it's not really about production, right? It's it's production. It's steady production over
07:02 a season. And that's what you're really looking for. You know, saints had a really nice last
07:07 five or six games, but they didn't have that for the beginning of the year. It took them a lot of
07:12 time to kind of find their rhythm and all that. And so there's, there's two things that I think
07:15 the saints have calculated in terms of their practices over the course of the soft season
07:21 that I think they're hoping helps to translate the system a lot quicker and be able to produce
07:26 more consistently earlier on in the season. We'll see if they work, but I think that the first one
07:31 is that they bring in a new system, but they bring in a bunch of coaches that already have
07:34 experience working together and that already have experience working in this, in the system.
07:38 So there's a lot of cohesion. There's a lot of, I'm not going to call it continuity,
07:42 but there's just a lot of that sort of symbiotic nature amongst all this coaching staff already.
07:48 And the system that they're bringing in and trying to introduce that I think helps,
07:53 because the only thing that makes that that's harder than teaching your roster, a new system
07:58 is teaching your roster, a new system with a bunch of coaches that are also learning that
08:02 new system. I think you've alleviated that with a little bit of the hiring practices here.
08:06 And I think the other thing is doing training camp out West and Irvine or, you know, in California,
08:11 wherever it's going to be, once we get the final notes on that, we believe it's going to be Irvine.
08:15 We believe it should be Irvine. And so with all of that, you know, they're there 24,
08:21 seven, they live, breathe, eat, sleep football the entire time. And I think that that will help
08:25 them quite a bit in terms of learning that new system as an offense together as a group for those,
08:29 you know, four or five weeks that they would be out there or that we would be out there.
08:33 Exactly. Yeah. And believe it or not, they've thought through this stuff, right? I mean,
08:37 they don't just be like, let's look at this talent of this roster. What do you think the
08:41 best fit of this offense is going to be? Then get the guys who would make it work. And then this guy
08:46 says they want to work with this guy or this person. I mean, it makes sense, right? And I mean,
08:51 you just see all those things. And again, I like the concept of Clint Kubiak. Again, we talked
08:56 about him last week on the show and just, I was digging up some stuff in the Vikings and just gets
09:02 me excited. And it's just the little things. It's just the play action. It's the motion. It's the
09:08 running routes using guys like Justin Jefferson as a decoy, getting the tight end involved more.
09:12 I mean, it is reason to be excited. And again, it's, they got to get this offensive line figured
09:19 out. I know that's a priority new offensive line coach. I really hope that, you know, John Benton
09:26 is going to be a guy that helps unlock Trevor pinning at the next level. We spent some time
09:30 talking about him next last, last week on the show. And again, I just think that he's one of
09:35 those important pieces, but they're going to want some guys that are athletic and get down the field.
09:40 I think pinning can do it, you know, and it's just, where is that going to be? Is that going
09:44 to be at a tackle position? Is that going to be a guard position? It's going to be really,
09:48 really interesting. And, you know, these offensive coaches they met over, you know, the weekend,
09:53 you know, last weekend before they had the HBCU legacy, but we even saw some out there
09:58 at the combine and stuff, but, you know, it was really interesting to see all those faces and
10:03 stuff out there, but I'll keep those in my pocket, but it's, you know, again, it's, it's one of those
10:10 that you look at how they're going to make this all work. And again, you look at how Dennis Allen
10:17 needs to make this work. And this is something where I think, you know, Clint Kubiak is a guy
10:21 that has a little bit of authority in the smarts and not that Pete Carmichael didn't have the
10:27 authority, but I think Clint Kubiak is a little bit more confident and stable in his dad's system or
10:33 you know, what he's trying to employ with that Shanahan mix, all that stuff.
10:37 Yeah. And I think that another one that's, you know, a big piece of Albert Breer wrote about it
10:42 over on his Monday morning quarterback last week was the addition of a quarterback coach, Andrew
10:47 Janoco. This guy is just wild smart, like incredibly smart. He has sort of this really
10:57 intimate knowledge of how to work the quick game, the quick passing game, three-step drop, get the
11:01 ball out, all this other stuff. And it's sort of building on the tenets of getting the ball in the
11:05 hands of your playmakers and letting them make plays, which is something we didn't see the Saints
11:09 do consistently last year. And you want to help your offensive line out, get the ball out. It's
11:14 not just about what do you do on the offensive line? What are you doing in your scheme to support
11:17 your offensive line as well? And so I think that that's another big piece of it is can you get the
11:23 ball out quickly? Can you do all that? And I think Andrew Janoco is going to be a big piece for the
11:28 New Orleans Saints, getting the opportunity to be able to do that. It's going to be really
11:31 interesting to see how this all pans out because this collection of coaching staff that they put
11:36 together is going to be intriguing to watch in 2024, but it gets even more intriguing projecting
11:43 to 2025, 2026, what other movement happens, who moves where, do the Saints all of a sudden
11:49 incorporate an offensive system with such success that it becomes a place where coaches come and go
11:56 and get hired away and things like that. We haven't really seen sort of like the tree develop
12:01 here in New Orleans. Do we start to see something like that if this is successful? I think you would,
12:05 but the big thing is that it's got to be successful first, but the first step to that success is can
12:10 you get the right people in the building? I think the Saints believe that they've done that.
12:13 Yeah. And look, we hope it happens, right? Right. I just, it's been hard sitting through this
12:20 offense for the past several years, right? It's just no consistency is the biggest thing that
12:24 drives me crazy. And like we sat through Ian book starting against the Dolphins in that current game.
12:29 And then not, not that I'm picking on Ian book. It's just, you know, we've seen how much this
12:35 thing has dropped off since drew left. And again, you just want to find something that says consistent
12:41 and puts points up on the board. Just give some stability because again, if they can get it to
12:46 where it's at least stable and consistent, then I feel good about the defense being able to come in
12:51 and do their thing, shut things down, being able to take over games, get them turnovers. I mean,
12:56 if they got all these turnovers that they did this, this past season, right. And then
13:00 right. I'm telling you, it's going to be a successful year. They're going to go 13 and
13:07 four or 14, three or anything. I just think that that's the difference between being a nine win
13:12 team to 10, 11, maybe a 12 win team in the NFC. I don't see them getting that much stronger
13:18 right now. There's a lot of first year head coaches coming in. You know, new coaches,
13:23 I should say a lot of times. And, you know, Detroit, I think is one of those guys teams that,
13:28 you know, you look at, I think they're a team that's going to be looking to get back where
13:32 they were San Francisco, another one, green Bay. They have to feel good about what happened with
13:36 Jordan love Philly and they fell off the face of the planet. I know that's not going to sit well
13:41 with them, but they had a lot of turnover. I don't know what's had to happen with Philly and then
13:44 Dallas, but new Orleans just win the division and it's there for you. Yeah. Yeah. And I,
13:52 sorry, I had a big reaction because you were talking about, um, with the, the consistency
13:57 from game to game. And I was thinking, you know what that, you know, what that means,
14:01 you know, what that needs, John is that it means you have to have an identity on offense. You have
14:06 to know who you are on offense. And one of the things that I thought was so interesting during
14:11 Dennis Allen's, uh, NFL report appearance with Steve, why should James Palmer was that he was
14:17 asked by James Palmer a bit about the potential of changing draft fits or draft prototypes on the
14:23 offensive side, because this new offensive staff, I did an exploration of that from the wide receiver
14:27 position over on St. Sue's network. But the thing that I thought was super interesting was Dennis
14:31 Allen talking about kind of comparing this 2024 off season, rebuild to the coaching staff to
14:38 2015, 2016, when he took over on the defensive side. And one of the things that he said that
14:43 they were, that they were conversing a ton and considering a ton when it was, you know,
14:47 2015 going into 2016 is who are we like, what defense do we have here? What's the identity?
14:54 Is it a four, three? Is it a three, four? He talked about the new England single high,
14:57 talked about the Seattle three, all those other things, and kind of like what they wanted to be.
15:02 And then once they figured out what they wanted to be system-wise, then they were able to go in
15:06 and find the right players to get that done. Now that didn't all happen in 2016, even though that's
15:11 when they made the decision about who they wanted to be. That was a 2017 draft Marshawn Latimore,
15:16 Marcus Williams, all that. And so I look at this year and I look at that rather that comment as a
15:21 little bit of an acknowledgement of like, Hey, the saints have been trying to figure out who they are.
15:26 Now they've identified the system that they want to be in. They identified the identity that they
15:32 want to have before going into the draft. Now they get the opportunity to draft with that in mind.
15:37 So I think finding the identity of this offense, which is something that they have struggled with
15:41 over the course of past couple of years, Alvin Camara saying, we don't have an identity during
15:46 the season. I think that that's a big piece that maybe now they can, they've alleviated by bringing
15:52 in this coaching staff, knowing what system they want to assign to, and then building off of that
15:56 identity. And then through, through that comes the consistency, because no matter what's happening on
16:01 the field, and this is one of the things that I, I always kind of, um, when I heard it, I always went,
16:10 what? Like every time that I would hear it is when you would ask, like, you know, no Taysom Hill,
16:14 this game, he had a huge game last week. What was it? Oh, well, the game situation didn't allow for
16:18 us to use. Taysom Hill was one of your best players on offense consistently. So what do you
16:23 mean that the game situation, like the game situation is that the game was being played
16:27 and therefore Taysom Hill should have been involved. And that's what happens when you have an
16:31 identity. When you have an identity, it doesn't matter what's happening in front of you. This is
16:35 what you do. That's what they tell us that they do on the defensive side all the time. Well, we
16:38 didn't really change anything. We just did what we do when we did it better. That's something that
16:43 they struggled to do on the offensive side last year because game situations took them out of
16:46 their identity. I think that that's something you have the opportunity to fix here in 2024. All
16:51 right, let me just, I'm going to step off my soapbox for a second. No, you're good, man. I'm glad
16:56 you brought up Alvin because he was out there at the HBCU combined. And I thought that was
17:00 important too, because I mean, these guys don't have to be around the team. Right. But I think
17:05 seeing Alvin out there is encouraging because some people have talked about, oh, they're going to
17:09 trade Alvin. He's not happy, all this other stuff. I mean, the guy just wants to win, wants to win
17:14 football games. And he's been a winner, you know, for the most part, since he came on as a rookie.
17:18 So yeah, it sucks having three straight losing seasons. He's always the first one to say it's
17:23 not fun, you know, and all this other stuff. And so I think he's going to be a huge part of this.
17:28 Again, we talked about Kendrick Miller. I think he's going to be a huge part of this. I don't know
17:31 if Jamal Williams is, we'll have to see how that goes. But you mentioned Dennis Allen and you were
17:37 talking about the identity. And for those who haven't followed the Saints, I mean, this was,
17:42 they had a Rob Ryan in there and Rob Ryan came in and did his thing. But then he hired Dennis Allen
17:47 as a senior defensive assistant. Ryan got fired. Allen took over the defense. He had started
17:52 putting his pieces in place like 2016. He had got Sheldon Rankins and then they had Von Bell.
17:59 And then 2017, they just did a lot of retooling. They didn't strip it down, but they got the right
18:04 guys in the system. And I know people probably don't want to hear this, but again, I've said
18:08 this a bunch of times, but reading Malcolm Jenkins autobiography, he called Dennis Allen,
18:14 the most genius play caller out there, genius defensive mind, like brilliant defensive mind.
18:21 And coming from a guy like Malcolm Jenkins, I think that means a lot.
18:24 A genius in his own right. Like that's incredible.
18:26 Yes. I mean, brilliant and stuff. And so I, again, say all that to say,
18:30 having that identity on defense, if D can just worry about that and maybe get a little bit
18:36 better in the end game management and then the offense can take care of itself under Clint
18:41 Kubiak, this team can be a little bit more functional and be able to win football games.
18:48 Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, that's exactly it. I mean, the functionality of the team has
18:52 to be built upon what it is that they want to do, who they want to be. I think if they can start to
18:56 answer that question a little bit more solidly, I guess I'll say with a little bit more of a
19:02 foundation, that's where this identity talk comes in. It should go a longer way for them next year.
19:08 The fact they won as many games as they did last year, based upon how they played,
19:14 to open up the season was actually kind of wild. And so I'll be very interested to see how quickly
19:19 the new offensive system actually snaps in. Like we talked about all the things that benefit that
19:25 type of coaches after they built the experience that's there, that being on the West coast during
19:29 training camp, always being together, all those things will, will sort of help to further all of
19:33 that. But I am very curious to see, is this a, is this a four week situation to get them into rhythm?
19:39 Do they have it right off the bat or is this, you know, because what it can't be is another 12 week
19:44 situation, right? It can't be another post late by situation to where it finally all comes together.
19:49 So that's, that's one of the biggest things that I'm most interested in going into 2024
19:53 is how long does it take for them to really kind of saddle up with that new system?
19:57 And hopefully they don't wait like they did, like with the red zone. They're like,
20:01 Oh yeah, we added an extra game. Why wasn't it done earlier? You know what I'm saying? It seems
20:04 like the, you know, you figure those things out and they've learned from some of those mistakes,
20:09 if you will. And so, you know, some of the defenses, you know, we, we focus on the teams,
20:14 but like, they're going to play the chiefs defense or the Cowboys defense, the Broncos.
20:18 I mean, they're going to play some of these defenses that create some, some interesting
20:22 packages and rush packages and things that they do. Some of those teams you can run the football on,
20:27 some of them are going to be harder to pass against. Some of them can turn, you know, get
20:30 takeaways if you will. So again, you look at this, I'm really excited to see how it builds out,
20:36 you know, from a coaching perspective, the scouts have been all in on all of this,
20:40 the whole time the coaches just started getting into their prep and such when senior bowl kind
20:46 of early February. And, you know, we're going to be able to get a lot of that stuff going.