Saints Fans: You Do NOT Want Malcolm Butler
By Tony Twillie
You are a true Black and Gold Fan, a Who Dat through and through. This is why the Malcolm Butler deal SHOULD NOT happen and why you would hate it as a fan!
The Malcolm Butler-New Orleans Saints fiasco has gone on now for too long. That he hadn’t signed his free agent tender with New England before he went on tour to visit teams should be telling and worrisome to whoever tries to sign him. Had signing Butler been part of the initial Brandin Cooks deal, it would have made perfect sense. Value for value! But Butler wasn’t available so we got what we could. The deal wasn’t terrible – a first round pick and a third round pick. But:
A) It’s worrisome because we didn’t get a player while giving up a player.
B) It’s worrisome because Cooks was coming into his own and is a top 10 receiver.
C) It’s worrisome because of the Saints draft record.
Yes the last two drafts were good, but we have exactly two players on this team from the THREE drafts prior to that combined. And our track record of picks at number 11 isn’t nice – Russell Erxleben, Shawn Knight, and Alex Molden (as we famously passed over Eddie George. It’s OK though, two other teams after us passed over him also and two other RB’s were taken before him…)
Malcolm Butler is an intriguing prospect to be sure, but why didn’t he sign that tender early on to get a deal done? He’s 27 years old already: not old, but old in football years.
Even though he’s only played a few years there may not be many total. And one of the large questions is money – what will it cost us to sign him and how will that money play into other signings? Common numerations for his contract put it between $11 million and $13 million a year. That is a lot of money to pay out. If he works on the lower end of that scale, then we have some wiggle room. But at the upper end we are choked again by salary cap.
Also, there remains the chance that if the Saints make an offer, the Patriots could counter that and hang on to Butler. This is particularly of interest if the Patriots, who have no picks in either the first or second round, find another team to make some type of deal with to move up into the first or second round.
The Saints also need to look at the draft coming up.
Pundits have said this draft is very talented. The Saints will surely be looking with their early picks for some defenders. Edge rusher has been touted as priority number one, but at least one prognosticator has Marshon Lattimore still on the board at 11. If this were the case the Saints, with no Butler, would surely be moving for Lattimore there, particularly since he’s the number one corner on the board. Whether you like Tre’ White or Gareon Conley, they’re both on the board at 11 in several mocks, so they should be there if the Saints want to gamble. And they could even trade back a few picks, depending on how things turn out, and get those guys at a better number, but still get the 5th year option. In other words, there are plenty of options if you’re looking CB.
Now, getting a CB in the draft means you are likely leaning heavily towards P.J. Williams being healthy and able to compete for that spot because you’ll need someone to get that corner up to speed quickly. Or there is the option of seeing the relative health of a Keenan Lewis and bringing him back in something of the Roman Harper role – special teams, teacher to the younger guys, backup corner. But there are corners in this draft who can play and make the Malcolm Butler deal – the deal with the devil in New England – a non-factor. If you see the Saints as a team on the rise and maybe look more towards next season as the year to make that big push, you say no to the Butler deal and wait.