NEW ORLEANS — Big news for the Saints as Drew Brees announces on Instagram that he couldn’t be more excited about the 2020 season. That he’s embracing the grind, that he can’t wait to come back and make another run at this Super Bowl one more time.
Really this would be the fourth straight season where we feel like the Saints are still within the Super Bowl window.
The news comes at a good time for Saints fans. We’re in the middle of Mardi Gras right now and now you can sit back, relax and enjoy your king cake and not be worried about it when you’re going to Thoth and Bacchus and Endymion this weekend.
We don’t know all the details right now as far as what his contract will look like. I would imagine it would look similar to the last one that he signed where he’s making something in the neighborhood of $25 to $30 million per year.
There’s a lot of dead money racked up with his contract that the Saints have continued to roll over, so it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if they make it sort of a multi-year deal in order to be able to fiscally make sense where they can place money in certain years and kind of push the debt back that they’re eventually going to have to pay off.
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Teddy likely gone
This probably means that Teddy Bridgewater is not coming back. My gut feeling is that he’s going to get some strong offers on the open market as a free agent. Recently ESPN had a report where they believe that he could eventually see offers of $30 million per year. I think that’s a little bit of a stretch for Bridgewater although he played well when the Saints called upon him and was 5-0 as a starter. But, he could likely see something in the neighborhood of $20-$25 million on maybe some type of small, “prove it” deal. He has won at the NFL level.
The bottom line is that with the NFL draft, if you’re not picking one of those top guys like Joe Burrow, if you’re going down the list, it’s more of a question mark and you’re not sure if they can do it at this elite level.
Hill likely staying
Taysom Hill, I would imagine, he’s probably coming back to the Saints. He is a restricted free agent, which means that the Saints would have a chance to match any offer that he gets on the open market. That could come in the form of a first round tender that they could put on him, which means a team would have to offer their best first round pick in order to get him, but I still think that Hill is someone the Saints really like. I know Sean Payton really likes him. I know that sometimes in the past Payton has said really good things about players and it’s been a smokescreen. I don’t think that’s the case with Taysom Hill. I really think that he thinks that Taysom could be the heir apparent to Drew Brees moves on.
This might actually be the final year in this Super Bowl window. There are big contracts coming up for Alvin Kamara, who is going into the final year of his rookie contract.
The point is that some of these guys, they’ll have to make a decision on pretty quickly, either this year of next year, unless they get another really great draft class this next season that could extend the window.
I think Brees is looking at this year as, we are ‘all in’ for this season. We have to do whatever we can to make this happen because there is no tomorrow.
I can’t guarantee you that he’ll play another season after this season. My feeling is that this is probably his last run at it and he’ll ride off into the sunset, hopefully with another Lombardi Trophy.
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