New Orleans Saints: 3 reasons Emmanuel Sanders is the perfect deadline target
Cost
The 32-year-old receiver has a base salary of just over $10 million this season with a cap hit of $12.93 million. The Saints couldn’t afford that so they’d have to make space, shaving off contracts elsewhere.
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However, there’s two aspects of a potential Sanders trade that should still allure New Orleans. For starters, they can let Sanders walk this season and get Smith and Kirkwood both healthy over the offseason.
This is the last year of Sanders’ contract, and he’ll certainly be looking for his next medium-sized deal this offseason. The Saints will spend elsewhere and let him walk. Knowing this, it’ll be interesting what Sanders’ value on the market is at this point in his career.
He’s not quite that top-tier threat he was prior to his Achilles injury. There is some potential that the Saints could retain him if he was brought to New Orleans, but it’s unlikely they want that contract on the books, allowing the team to use the money elsewhere.
Sanders, on a 2-5 Broncos’ team and on a contract year, may not stay in Denver regardless, so they might as well get some value for him. His cost overall is relatively fluid. It’d be nice just to secure the receiver for a fourth-round pick or less, but that seems unlikely.