FanPost

A revised Saints offseason knowing what has happened now

Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

The offseason and draft have finally come to an end. While the Saints didn't do everything we were looking for, I think we can all agree that overall they did a very good job at putting us in position to still contend for a superbowl. That being said, after seeing some of the moves and signings other teams made I couldn't help but wonder how the offseason could have gone differently if we knew this information ahead of time. Below is one of the bold ideas I came up with of what our offseason could have looked like given all the information we know now.

Trades:

The Saints trade Kamara, Warford and 130 for Hopkins and a 2021 2nd(If we need to throw in a future 3rd instead or add a future 4th then so be it but I see this trade and somewhat close). The Texans aren't getting the picks they got from the Cardinals and now have to give up a future 2nd, however they are getting a much better RB in Kamara, more OL help to protect Watson, and a 4th this year. The Saints acquire a top tier WR to pair with Thomas, fix our WR woes, and grab a future 2nd. What we also do is restructure Hopkins contract like he asks to give him more money but also save us probably around 3-4mil in cap space this season.

*I will note that I do know this does mess up their trade for Cooks since they traded a future 2nd for him. However I am assuming that they still figure out a trade with the Rams to get that done. Maybe instead of a 2nd they send a 3rd and the Rams send a 6th for example.

FA signings:

The good news is that this doesn't take any cap space from us so we can still go out and sign Sanders, Peat, Jenkins everyone who we signed in the offseason. I took a look at the list of FAs that were signed and I didn't really see any FA signings that we should have done and replaced our FA signings with. Even with Hopkins here now Sanders is still a need to run through the slot. Jenkins maybe we could replace with Bell but I would prefer Jenkins for his better cover skills. You could also argue signing Glasgow over Peat but theres not a big difference between them and Peat can play LT so I prefer Peat here. One change though is that now we really need a RB with Kamara gone, so we take some of the money we used to restructure Hopkins to sign either Gordon or Gurley but I am going to go with Gurley here.

Draft:

So now as we come into the draft we definitely do not have to answer any questions about WR and our offense since now we will be rolling out Thomas, Hopkins, Sanders with Cook, Gurley, Brees besides now we have a hole at RG. Good thing we all know that Ruiz is going to be there at 24 and we still pick him to slot into RG which Payton has already said he looks for him to do. So now our offense is definitely complete and honestly have you seen a better offensive unit in the last 20 years?

Still going through the draft Loomis just can't help himself now that he has a future 2nd from the Texans in his pocket. Instead of using the 2021 3rd to move up for Baun, they use the 2021 2nd to move up to 65 with the Bengals to get Logan Wilson who doesn't carry the injury history of Baun and we dont have to worry if hes a pass rusher or a LB, we know he is a LB.

The rest of the draft happens as it did with Trautman and Stevens since Payton can't help himself. Since we lost pick 130 in the Texans trade, Loomis trades the 2021 3rd instead.

So in the end, below are the differences that were made.

Lost: Kamara, Warford, Baun

Gained: Hopkins, Gurley, Wilson

I think I like this offseason a bit better as we now would have 2 top 5 WRs on the team for the next couple years at least, we still have a good RB but don't have to worry about having to resign him for 15mil, and get a more reliable LB imo. Losing Kamara does hurt but Gurley can catch the ball too and with this trio of WRs I am not as focused on our RB being an elite pass catcher as we needed him to be when it was just Thomas.

What say all of you? Would you prefer our offseason happen as it happened or would you prefer this new offseason where we create the most dynamic offense this league has ever seen!

This FanPost was written by a reader and member of Canal Street Chronicles. It does not necessarily reflect the views of CSC and its staff or editors.