How to Rebuild
It's easy to call out a critic for offering no solutions of their own, so here is what would be my plan to rebuild after firing Mickey Loomis, Dennis Allen, and Pete Carmichael:
Fix the Salary Cap Debt. Stop the cycle of getting under one years cap by getting $50-100 million over the next years.
The Saints lead the NFL in dollars over the 2024 salary cap. This is not sustainable for a mediocre team. One common formula for winners in the NFL is to achieve mediocre to above average results on the cheap, spending far less salary cap than other teams, and then break the bank to 'win now' when they are within striking distance. The Saints are breaking the bank to achieve mediocrity, meaning if they ever became competitive there would be nothing left in the tank for any extra push. Currently the Saints are only $4.4 Million under the 2023 salary cap with basically EVERY contract on the roster restructured to the max. This made many speculated trade deadlines moot. A lot of players fans wanted us to add to help the pass rush, etc simply could not have fit under the cap and there were no contracts to restructure for any additional magic. The Saints currently lead the league at $71.5 million over the cap for 2024. They can get under the cap but only by restructuring many veteran players contracts to push money due out through 2028 (the maximum 5 year prorations that the NFL allows). Unfortunately restructuring every veteran means keeping every veteran which means failing to rebuild the oldest roster in the NFL.
Get Younger. Try to trade out of Guaranteed Salary Contracts that cannot be cut.
To win in the future, the Saints need to get younger and change the culture of failure that Mickey Loomis and Dennis Allen have instilled. To do that, they need to move on from many veteran players who are past their prime or about to be, too injury prone, don't fit in the system, or are not worth their current contracts. Unfortunately Derek Carr's 2024 salary is guaranteed. Cameron Jordan also has a guaranteed salary for 2024. Jordan is a great Saint but but he is paid like he is still the 2022 version when he has lost a step, he no longer has the speed to close as a pass rusher, and deserves the chance to compete on a contender where his run defense and leadership can be valuable not waste away on a rebuild. Because Carr and Jordan have guaranteed salaries for 2024, the best move would be to consider trading them for minimal return to any team willing to take on some of their salaries. That could be very possible for Jordan. For Carr we might have to pay 80% of his salary, but even saving $6 million out of $30 million would be something. There is a chance that Carr's career could be resurrected under a QB guru coach, like Russell Wilson's this year, but since moving on from Carr would also be the biggest cultural step to a rebuild, its at least worth trying the unlikely task of finding a trade partner to get his guaranteed salary off the books.
Explore trading other veterans, to gain picks along with cap savings while fixing the salary cap.
If the Saints do not move on from Carr, they could look at the trade value of other veterans. It does not make sense for a rebuilding team to hold onto an aging RB like Kamara in the last couple years that he is likely to be a contributor. Kamara could possibly be traded for value. Marson Lattimore is in his 7th year as a pro, has had trips to the IR his last two years, and typically star corners break down in the year 7-9 range. Its very unlikely that Lattimore will still be a start in 2025 when the Saints are ready to compete again, yet all the Saints do is annually restructure his contract so the dead cap to every move on would be a nightmare. Using what cap flexibility the Saints have to trade Kamara or Carr would free up a ton of money for 2025 to get fully out of cap hell. Taysom Hill is another player who fits in this category. Yes, he has amazing heart and has some amazing games against poor losing teams. But he is not able to consistently produce against good teams, and his biggest value is in taking what is supposed to be the leader of the team, the starting QB, off the field. He is 33 years old, plays like Bo Jackson at QB, and had a long injury history before the past 2 years of random luck. He would not hold up as a starting QB, and had not shown the ability to start at any other position, yet he is paid 2/3rds of Travis Kelce's pay. I don't know if any team would trade for Taysom Hill, but it could be explored. Demario Davis has a relatively affordable salary and only 1 year left on his contract (which should not be extended for an aging player on a rebuilding team) but the team could consider trading him if he wants to play for a contender, its the right thing to do and would accelerate some cap hits that would free up money for 2025.
Cut aging veterans to save Salary Cap long term and start a youth movement.
If the Saints cannot do much trading with Carr, Jordan, Kamara, Lattimore, Hill, or Davis, the next step is to look at cuts of aging players that do not belong on a rebuilding team. Michael Thomas should be the first to go, having been injured 4 years in a row. It will cause a cap hit, but receiver is a deep position, and its time to move on. Andrus Peat should follow. If there is no interest in trading for Kamara, a cut on an aging RB would be smart, just like Cook and Elliott last season, as it simply does not pay in this league to give a top salary to an 8th year RB on a rebuilding team that doesn't have the oline to run anyway. Taysom Hill should be next in line. Jameis Winston also, unless we are able to move on from Carr, as we will never find the next Brock Purdy etc by filling our roster with veteran QBs with known flaws and injury issues. After these players, Mathieu and Maye are logical cap casualties with affordable cap hits to cut, freeing up lots of cap cash for 2025 compared to restructuring them and passing the buck to future years and making it very hard to move on later if they decline. Any cuts we make could also be designed Post-June-1 cuts splitting the cap penalty between 2024 and 2025 and giving us flexibility to complete a rebuild of the culture and roster and get young faster.
Anticipate the decline of veteran stars who are nearing the end of their primes.
Ryan Ramczyk and Lattimore are two players who are valuable now but should be expected to decline in the next couple years. Ramczyk can be good when healthy, but 7 years into his young career he is taking regular rest days alongside grandpa Jimmy Graham and constantly coming out of games with tweaks and bruises. Meanwhile his formerly elite play has declined to pretty good. Some bookend tackles are good for decades but its also very common for some some booked tackles to wear down as they approach 30 years old. It sure looks like Ramczyk is built more along that Kyle Turley line than a Willie Roaf. The same with Lattimore's who no longer registers as elite on PFF. While tackles can be 50/50 on long careers or wearing down before 30, very long productive careers for cornerbacks are extremely rare, and a quick decline from prime to liability is the norm. While it would not make sense to cut these quality players if no trade offer is available, and it probably makes sense to keep Ramczyk for now so our offensive line can protect our quarterbacks, it also makes sense to recognize that decline could come soon, and that Ramczyk will offer no protection to our QBs if he continues to miss practice, decline, and suffer injuries. So, with Lattimore and/or Ramczyk a key strategy could be to not cut them but also not restructure their contracts if we can afford it. Pay for today today. Don't restucture and expect their future production to justify tens of millions of present salary deferred to giant future costs. In all likelihood these players will not still be stars in 2025 or 2026, and by avoiding restructures with them, we can give ourselves a lot more option to move on if this is the case.
Expect a 2 year rebuild. But don't could yourself out of the wildcard or #4 seed hunt even during a rebuild.
But make no mistake. The Saints cannot financially afford a clean rebuild in the 2024 offseason. We are $71.5 million over the cap, and cuts and trades will largely increase that deficity while restructures will decrease it by pushing the burden to future years. Fortunately, if the Saints restructured every player, they could reduce their cap number by $110-120 million vs the $71.5 million needed. So, basically the Saints don't have to restructure everyone, they simply need to restructure 60-70% to be able to cut/trade 30-40% of their costly aging veterans. Making progress is the key. This is a 2 year project. If the Saints do a 60-70% restructure and a 30-40% rebuild in the 2024 offseason, instead of a 100% restructure of all contracts like they did in the 2023 offseason in order to 'add the players to win now' that didn't work, then the 2025 cap picture will look a lot better than the 2023 cap picture does, and the other 60-70% of the rebuild will be possible in 2025, putting the Saints in a great cap situation going forward. The key is for the Saints to get young and get debt free. Then the Saints can roll the dice on young Quarterbacks in the draft who have the upside Derek Carr clearly doesn't. If they miss, they can try again. If they hit and find a young star, they will have the cap to build around them.
Find a new GM and head coach.
Obviously the Saints will need a new GM and coaching staff. A good GM could be acquired from a winning team, perhaps some assistant to the Eagles GM who fleeced us, or teams like SF or Baltimore that consistently win. For coaches the Saints could go with a winner who came up just short in his last gig like Harbaugh (this has worked in the with Reid, Vermail, Gruden, Dungy, etc winning in their second gig), or a coach like Flores who at least had some winning seasons in his first gig (similar to Belichick or Carroll), or a young coach from a good coaching tree. All three of those head coaching directions could work, you just have to roll the dice on someone you believe in. What has never worked is finding a total failure with a sub .250 winning percentage like Dennis Allen and handing him the job. The other thing that has never worked is bring in a coach who actually WON a previous Super Bowl as head coach. No coach has ever done is again for a second team, I can see how the fire would not still be there, so I would not bet against history by attempting it.
Don't be a sucker like the Panthers and bet everything on a top-3-pick QB. Draft a young QB in 2024 or 2025, but there is plently of value in the rest of the first round and in later rounds. Forcing the pick with a big trade up to get your guy usually fails big.
From there, I think there are some key decision points to build a winner. We need a young QB out of the draft for costs and also for our referee problem. NFL refs hate us and consistently make biased calls against us, but the best bet to stop that is to change our identity with a rebuild so they don't look at us as the same Saints team that wronged them with all that hassle about the no call (which was total bs but they dont care, they see themselves as the victim) and to get a young star QB who the NFL shield sees as a 20 year cash cow who they cannot afford to sabotage with bad calls. If we have the next Mannning or Brady, we can overcome bad calls, but we probably won't have to because that QB would be important to the shield to protect. But at the same time that we need to get a young QB we DO NOT need to trade up big for one. 1st round QBs are a lot more successful on average in the NFL than late round QBs, but super early 1st round QBs are not a lot more successful than regular early to mid 1st round QBs. A lot of top 1st round QBs were not top 5 picks: Josh Allen, Justin Hebert, Patrick Maholmes, Aaron Rodgers, Deshaun Watson before the massages, etc. A few start QBs were even later round picks like Hurts, Wilson, Cousins, Purdy, Prescott, etc. Lamar Jackson was the #32 overall pick. The 'top 3 pick' guys like Burrow and Lawrence are not the best QBs and the league and are a small minority of quality QBs in the league, yet teams still insist on selling the farm and trading years of draft picks because they see a top 3 pick QB as a can't miss. It simply does not work like that. If we pick 7th, we do not need to sell the farm to move up to #1 overall to get our guy, put him under incredible pressure and criticism for what we gave up, and be unable to get him protection in an oline and weapons in receivers because we traded too much to get him. We can move up a few picks for one 2nd or 3rd rounder perhaps, but ultimately we need to stand our ground and take a QB around where we draft, because its simply a better formula to win in recent NFL history. And if a QB we believe in is not available in a draft position we can get to without mortgaging the future to trade up, we can always take a shot in the 2nd, 3rd, or a later round. As we see from star QBs in the NFL today, those shots are real. The two winningest teams in the NFL this year are the Eagles and Ravens, quarterbacked by #32 and #53 overall picks. Next we have 6 teams at 8-3 and of those 2 are QB'd by later round picks Prescott and Purdy. I can't think of an NFL team that sold the farm to move up for the a top 3 pick QB and is winning right now for it. The Chiefs did trade a future 1st round pick, but only one, and they did it at a time when they were a winning team and new the costs, and the pick they traded away was very unlikely to be a super high pick. Mahomes was not asked to start immediately so the pressure on him was a lot less. If we trade multiple 1st rounders to move to a top 3 pick we will put too much pressure on and not enough talent around a QB. We need to mainly stand pat, or only trade up a little, and let our QB come to us like most successful teams have.
After QB, place the most value on offensive line and pass rush to win in the trenches. Build with depth, don't trade up for primadonnas.
Beyond the QB, games are won in the trenches. So, using the same philosophy of not trading up to waste too many resources and put too much pressure on one player, we need to focus our other draft picks on offensive line and defensive line. We need to be deep in those areas. We also need to keep open competition and not hand those picks starting jobs if they don't deserve it. In the past the Saints made the mistake of loading their offensive line with 1st round picks but considering that to address the position and leaving those players with starting jobs they could take for granted without performing. Players like Peat and Ruiz had no incentive to perform. They were propped up and given big extensions to justify their draft selections when on other teams they would have rode the bench with their lackluster performances, perhaps lighting a fire under them to actually get good performances. In the past, the Saints had great success with mid round picks like Armstead, Evans, and Nicks on the offensive line, not just 1st round primadonnas, healthy competition. To be successful the Saints need to invest a lot of draft picks on the offensive line and on pass rushers, but they need to do that to build depth and competition, not draft 1 golden boy and pencil him in for lifetime job security. Games are won in the trenches but this is the current Saints teams weakest area other than QB, especially oline and pass rush.
Maintain depth at other important positions where the team is currently deep.
While we invest draft picks in QB, oline, and pass rush / dline, some other positions of importance are WR, secondary, and linebacker. However, we are currently deep at WR and Secondary and have adequate starters at LB, so short term these don't need to be a focus, though long term they should be in the mix.
Don't be a sucker like the Falcons and waste top draft picks on TE. It's exciting for Fantasy Football and fan hype but its not where you get value and win rings, and it didn't even work in Fantasy.
There are certain positions where an NFL team that wants to be competitive should not waste high draft picks. The Atlanta Falcons are a prime example of this. In 3 years, they wasted two fairly high 1st round picks on TE and RB. This is stupid. It excited their dumb fans but it is stupid. TE is the most unpredictable position. You can be a greek god in college but when you have to run out of over the middle, extend, and take brutal hits from NFL linebackers over and over in the NFL, who can maintain their health and composure as a TE at the NFL level is extremely unpredictable. Of the top 7 all time NFL tight ends by pro bowl appearances, only one was a first round pick. At other positions a typical number is that 5-6 of the top 7 all time would be 1st rounders, that elite handfull of pro bowls level talent that means not just great but all time, its usually found in the 1st round. At TE, its Tony Gonzalez from the 1st round 30 years ago and a bunch of later rounders like Gronk, Gates, Graham, heck you might be better off just whatever tight end's last name starts with a 'G' than the one rated as a 1st round pick, but then you would miss Kelce, Whitten, Sharpe, Kittle, Andrews, and Jordan who were all not 1st round picks. The TE from GA is supposed to be a sure thing, but the last sure thing in Kellen Winslow II ended up with more sexual assaults of grandmothers than pro bowls. The Falcon's stupidly used an incredibly high draft pick on a TE and he is doing nothing and their offense is a disaster. It's not that TE is not a valuable position. It's very valuable. It's just that you cannot predict which TE from college will be good in the pros enough to make any worth of a high 1st round pick, or any 1st round pick that one who appears good in college will fall to. You have to draft the position in later rounds. Also decent TE's production is so system dependent that you can often also find good TE's at value contract prices on their second contracts after they found a bad match for their skills on the first team to draft them.
Don't be a sucker like the Falcons and waste top draft picks on RB. It's exciting for Fantasy Football and fan hype but its not where you get value and win rings, and it didn't even work in Fantasy.
After making a dumb 1st round pick on a TE, the Falcons used another high 1st round pick on a RB. Unlike TE, most NFL teams at least realize you should not take a RB early in the 1st round. The Chiefs wasted a high 1st round pick on Clyde Edwards Helaire, putting him behind a good line on a good offense with a good QB and still he did nothing. Leonard Fournette looked like a can't miss and he missed. Ultimately RB production is so much more about system, oline play, fit, healthy, etc if you have those, a 3rd or 4th rounder will set the world on fire, while if you don't an early 1st rounder will do nothing. Being a 1st round pick often sets a lot of pressure and expectations before a young RB has time to learn the system and learn pass blocking, and sets them up for failure. Yet the Falcons, with a nobody QB, a lackluster offense, a patchwork offensive line, and already having a 1000 yard RB, somehow decided another RB was what they needed, and now that RB is a bust and seems like just another guy who is competant and not great. And with the shelf life of RB's in the NFL the team will probably be happy to move on in 5-6 years even if he is great, because you can get a formerly great 6 year RB in free agency for pennies, versus your own trying to hold out for some record deal they will blow their knee the day after signing. The Falcons obviously should have spent those picks on offensive line, QB, or receivers, but these people are not professionals and will never learn obvious things.
Take a shot. Don't settle for mediocrity.
Winning is not that hard. You take a shot on coaches. You take a shot on QBs. You don't hire coaches who always lost in the past. You don't pay $150 million for aging QBs you know are proven mediocre and won't take the next step. Positions of greatest value are QB, OT, and pass rush. Next tier of value is secondary, DT, OG/C, WR, and LB. You address RB and TE in middle rounds because they aren't worth 1st round picks. You don't do big trades up because it puts too much pressure on young players expected to start immediately and is not worth it for top-3 pick QBs who are not historically better than top-15 pick QBs. You can't have too much depth at oline, pass rush, and secondary because those positions are critical but middle round depth is valuable too for competition so you can't trade all those picks. If a player you want is not there are an early pick, trading back is a great way to add depth of middle round picks and ammunition for modest trades up when needed.
Start the rebuild now. Get young. Get exciting. Build the team right.
The Saints can be as much or more contenders in 2025 as they are in 2023 with only rebuild year in 2024, while completing that rebuild in 2025. Even in 2024 starting a rebuild is no guarantee the team won't win the division if it remains weak. What's missing with the Saints now is big upside. A team that is weak at QB, o-line, and pass rush is not a serious contender to go far in the playoffs, and the Saints have given that up without rebuilding to regain that edge. Its time to rebuild and aim for upside. It's time to get a coach who can motivate and strategize and more players who are young and competing. The Saints can be exciting again, but to accomplish that we need to rebuild and move on from the stale past.