In 20 years, 15 with a future HoF QB and future HoF coach, Mickey Loomis was in the building for 1 Super Bowl. This does not make him a great GM. He was not the difference, he was there under Jim Haslett during many losing Saints seasons. Dallas never tried to lure Mickey Loomis away. Mickey Loomis does not lead the league in any career numbers except spending future years money and trading future years draft picks. Mickey Loomis squandered Sean Payton and Drew Brees best years by signing more injury prone players, wasting draft picks instead of stockpiling them, and trading up to draft busts. Mickey Loomis always puts himself first. It has been widely reported that Sean Payton was going to be dealt to Dallas for multiple high draft picks a few years back, and Mickey Loomis pulled the deal at the list minute because Anthony Davis forced a trade from the Pelicans, and Loomis did not want to be seen as the GM who gave up both. What does the NBA have to do with the NFL? Why does the best thing for an NFL franchise change based on what happens for an NBA franchise. It doesn't. But the best thing for Mickey Loomis does change, optics for Mickey come first. So we turn down draft picks, keep an unhappy coach, and watch him later retire for nothing. Payton was a great coach and I wish we still had him, and maybe Mickey should have refused to listed to trade offers for him in the first place. But optics for Mickey should never have been the top factor. That they were is telling.

Andrus Peat is a backup level injury prone talent with a $25 million cap number to cut. Taysom Hill is on the wrong side of 30, doesn't have a starting position, is coming off a bad concussion and Lisfranc injury, and has a $29 million cap number to cut. Because of Mickey Loomis' cap mismanagement, the Saints can't afford to cut their worst players, and many future years with these players become effectively guaranteed because we can't cut them in time to prevent future salaries from vesting. But lets not forget the ultimate disaster contract where Mickey Loomis potentially cost the Saints multiple champioships in their prime window to win in 2017. He looked at Nick Fairley's medical history of heart issues, gave him a $28 million contract in a day when that was big money, with no new medical exams to make sure the known issue had not gotten worse. Fairley calmly signed the contract, got an exam a month later, and never played a down. Mickey Loomis struck it rich on one contract with a player with a concerning injury history: Drew Brees. Ever since Brees, he is a one trick pony, hoping lightning strikes twice. And when Nick Fairley, Andrus Peat, Taysom Hill, Michael Thomas, etc are on the sideline, Saints fans are happy to blame injury for a disappointing season. Injury isn't a bug of GM Mickey Loomis , its a feature.

Under Mickey Loomis, the Saints has increasingly managed the cap by restructuring all their big contracts every season to convert salaries to signing bonuses. Thus, the current year can be brought under the cap in return for putting the next over, in a never ending cycle. Some fans say that its great to be aggressive and spend the money since salary cap doesn't win games. But we are not beating all the other teams at 9-8 or getting more players. We are losing players in free agency. The money we borrow from future caps just covers up money we borrowed from this years cap in previous years. It is a zero sum game. All that this cycle does, once you are caught in it, is make it very difficult to cut your big contract players if they underperform, so an Andrus Peat gets to play out his deal. Perhaps in 2018 we beat the system and got extra firepower by borrowing ahead in the cap, but now we are so leveraged we are just borrowing to pay past debts. We don't come out ahead of other teams, we come out behind, because we spend the same, just with less present dollars and more future dollars, but we lose roster flexibility, so we spend more than others on busts and blunders we can't release.

The Patriots often trade back in the NFL draft to secure extra draft picks. But a formula to win 6 Superbowls is not enough for Mickey Loomis. He has won one in 20 years and he intends to get 7 in 140 years via the opposite formula, assuming he lucks into another 6 Drew Brees'. Mickey trades up to get the player he wants. Two first rounders for an average ok starting running back in Mark Ingram? Two first rounders for an injury prone DE in Marcus Davenport who you never knew if he would hold up at the NFL level because he came out of some junior college playing against scholar athletes? Since the Saints often trade away their picks before the draft, their only option to trade up is usually to use picks from future drafts which tend to trade at 50% of their value. That's like paying 50-100% interest for a 1 year loan.  The Patriots ran their franchise like a payday loan business letting desperate teams give them exorbitant profits for short term loans. The Saints see their 6 rings and do the opposite, running their franchise like the payday loans best customer, and the sheep among Saints fans ogle the concept of cash now and celebrate the stupidity.