New Orleans Saints offseason grades: At least the city has good food

The most exciting thing to happen in New Orleans football in 2024 was hosting the Super Bowl and the Sugar Bowl. It was an absolutely brutal season for the Saints that left the team with a 5-12 record, a fired coach, and questions about whether it was even viable to rebuild with the salary cap situation the team is in.

Then the franchise was hit with the news that Derek Carr would retire from the NFL rather than try to rehabilitate from shoulder surgery. It has been a truly brutal period for New Orleans football as fans have watched the once-mighty Saints fade into obscurity, still struggling to move on after the Drew Brees/Sean Payton era.

Did they do enough to turn the page despite these woes?

There are few things I hated more when it came to coaching than the Dennis Allen era in New Orleans. This was an organization that was left reeling by Payton’s exit, causing them to just hand the job to Allen on what they initially thought would be an interim basis — then it became a permanent one.

Thankfully the Saints decided to turn the page this offseason and made an interesting hire in Kellen Moore. Moore is one of those guys who had routinely been on the radar for a coaching gig ever since his time in Dallas, but then took a major step back in his head coaching journey, only to find it once more after leading the Eagles offense to a Super Bowl.

The Nick Sirianni coaching tree has had a modicum of success with both Shane Steichen in Indianapolis and Jonathan Gannon in Arizona showing promise as head coaches. It’s unclear if Moore can have that kind of success.

Truth is, clearing Dennis Allen is a low bar. Moore has assembled an interesting staff mix of former Cowboys and Eagles position coaches, as well as hiring Brand Staley as defensive coordinator — who he serves under with the Chargers. For the pure fact that anything is better than the prior staff with the Saints this was a win.

Grade: A-

The Saints continued to do what they have done for years and kick the can down the road by restructuring large contracts, which somewhat limited what they could do in terms of signing players.

In terms of new players there’s really just one major name, and that’s Justin Reid who joins the Saints at safety from the Chiefs. Reid was the 22nd player on our free agency Top 50 rankings and will bring a significant leadership upgrade to the secondary. Unfortunately that unit took a hit with the loss of cornerback Paulson Adebo — which leaves a bit of a gap.

Outside of Reid it was about shoring up the talent New Orleans had with Chase Young and Juwan Johnson getting new deals. Brandin Cooks is an interesting addition, but at this point it’s unclear if he has anything left in the tank.

When it comes down to it the Saints needed to find more talent but didn’t have the resources to do it. Reid is a nice pickup, but the rest is a little ho-hum.

Grade: C+

This is where the offseason fell apart for the Saints. New Orleans needed guaranteed impact talent to start reshaping things, and walked away with a middling class with two massive question marks in their 1st and 2nd round picks.

It’s unclear if Kelvin Banks Jr. can be an offensive tackle at the NFL level, which means the Saints might have overdrafted a guard with better dedicated guards on the board. They followed that up with Louisville QB Tyler Shough, a rookie who will be 26-years-old when the season begins, making him older than Trevor Lawrence who has been in the league for four years.

This was a draft of desperation need picks instead of getting talent who can shape a franchise.

Grade: D

The Saints are victims of circumstance, and they created that circumstance. Continually pushing their cap woes into future seasons has caused a massive snowball of debt to build and the bill is coming due.

At this point the only thing that can bail out the Saints is if they strike gold in the draft several years running, and manage to finally get out from under some of their horrific contracts — like Taysom Hill, who is somehow making an astonishing $17.9M this season despite not even contributing 400 yards of total offense last year.

It’s going to be a long, difficult process. Outside of hiring Kellen Moore and signing Justin Reid there just wasn’t much done.

Grade: C