Don't overpay for Champ Bailey or any other long term veteran living off of his name.
Hopefully he can give us one good Darren Sharper type year (minus raping 15+ women)
Don't see many holes on this team. With De la Puente signing with the Bears, the team will automatically upgrade at center.
Loomis: Saints' offseason going as planned
April, 14, 2014 Apr 14
8:00AM ET
By Mike Triplett | ESPN.com
From the outside looking in, the New Orleans Saints’ offseason has probably seemed a bit hectic.
The Saints have been full of surprises, from the big-name acquisitions of Jairus Byrd and Champ Bailey to the big-name departures of Darren Sproles and others.
Based on reactions from fans and national analysts alike, the biggest head-scratcher of all has been the fact that the Saints keep adding ammo to the roster despite a tight squeeze against the salary cap.
But none of these moves have been made on the fly.
General manager Mickey Loomis insisted last week that just about every move the Saints made was part of a calculated plan.
“It’s not a process where all of a sudden there’s somebody [available] and you decide, ‘Hey, let’s go do this,’” Loomis said while speaking with reporters at LSU’s pro day.
“We have a short-term plan and a long-term plan,” Loomis continued. “And we come into each offseason with 19 or 20 or 25 different things that we want to get accomplished. And you just kind of go down the checklist. And obviously things come up that are unexpected, and you have to react to those. But for the most part, it’s a plan and an execution of the plan.
“So I would say it was kind of business as usual.”
Asked how many of those items the Saints have hit, Loomis said, “We’ve hit a lot of them. We always do. We don’t hit every item, but we hit almost all of them.”
(Click here for a recap of all the Saints' moves as of the beginning of last week.)
The Saints are actually in great shape with the salary cap after agreeing to a pay cut with defensive tackle Brodrick Bunkley last week. They’re now $3.6 million under the cap, and they probably don’t have too many more expensive purchases left in their shopping cart.
New Orleans still has some noteworthy tasks left to complete. The biggest is signing tight end Jimmy Graham to a long-term contract extension, but Loomis insisted that there is no immediate pressure to get that done. Graham's franchise tag figure is already counting $7.035 million against the Saints' salary cap, so they don't need to clear out any new cap space for him.
The Saints also need to find a new starting center after letting Brian de la Puente get away in free agency, though they like second-year pro Tim Lelito’s potential as a candidate for that role.
And there are a few other positions where New Orleans needs to get younger, including receiver, but most of those needs can be filled through the draft.
As Loomis suggested, we won’t know until the fall whether the Saints’ plan worked out. But so far, at least, everything is going as planned.
“I feel like we’ve executed our plan well,” Loomis said. “Whether that’s a good plan or not remains to be seen. But we feel like it is.”
Lucky y'all don't play us this year...
But we do
3rd time better be a charm for you Kitties. Make it count. We champions.But we do
Is this the WR/TE fight?
Yeah
Didn't even have Percy last time either. I respect the Panthers, but we've went into their house two years running and won.
Nice
Keep up the drama so Carolina can cruise to the first B2B NFC South Conference le ever.
Led by Jerricho Cotchery and Jason AvantNice
Keep up the drama so Carolina can cruise to the first B2B NFC South Conference le ever.
Did your team even improve this offseason? 8-8 written all over it. Cam still has no weapons.Nice
Keep up the drama so Carolina can cruise to the first B2B NFC South Conference le ever.
We still have the best front 7 and we have a bunch of big receivers that may not be big names, but can catch. My biggest concern is taking over Gross' spot.
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