What the Saints should do during the 2021 NFL offseason

As they head towards a potentially franchise-altering offseason, what should the Saints look to accomplish?

For years, the Saints have kicked the proverbial can down the road in order to maximize their Super Bowl window with Drew Brees. At the end of it all, the team wasn’t able to win a Super Bowl, and it’s time for the bill to be paid.

New Orleans came into the offseason with nearly $100 million in cap space, and even after conducting an extensive amount of transactions to fix that, they are still around $30 million over.

In the process, they have cut ties with impact veterans such as Emmanuel Sanders and Janoris Jenkins, several depth players, and, as things stand, do not have a starting quarterback.

In a division with the defending Super Bowl champions, a team with talented playmakers and a new regime in place (Falcons), and a team looking likely to either trade for Deshaun Watson or draft a first-round quarterback (Panthers), they are not in an enviable position.

At the same time, this is also a team that has won a combined 49 regular-season games over the past four seasons. Thus, is the drop-off going to be so severe that they suddenly cannot be an impact competitor in the NFC?

This organization is in a very difficult spot, but it’s one they put themselves in, and they have no choice but to try to get creative to wiggle out of it. It certainly would not be the first time that they turned the fortunes of their franchise around in one offseason (see: 2017 draft), after all.

So, how should they proceed when it comes to maintaining competitiveness while also reconstructing a team built to win sustainability?

In this piece, I will lay out a proposed blueprint for them. With these seven steps, the organization can put themselves in a position to successfully get themselves out of what might be the trickiest situation in all of football.