New Orleans Saints need more than just Josh Pederson at tight end
While most of the attention has been put on the lack of depth at wide receiver, the New Orleans Saints aren’t in an ideal spot at tight end either. They signed Josh Pederson to help with that, but — no disrespect to Pederson — he isn’t going to solve the issues there.
Pederson, the son of former Eagles head coach Doug Pederson, played college ball in the state of Louisiana as a member of Louisiana-Monroe’s program. He played for the Warhawks from 2017-2020 and went undrafted in the 2021 NFL Draft.
Pederson’s best season came in 2019 when he hauled in 43 receptions for 567 yards and nine touchdowns. Those numbers are impressive and the Saints would be content if he could do that in the pros but that’s not likely considering he’s a rookie and, in all likelihood, a depth piece on the roster right now.
Can confirm Saints have signed TE Josh Pederson, per source. An undrafted rookie from Louisiana-Monroe, and son of former Eagles coach Doug Pederson, was recently waived by the 49ers. Saints have been thin at the position in recent days with Nick Vannett, Ethan Wolf injured. https://t.co/ZZXcBCKF6q
— Mike Triplett (@MikeTriplett) August 6, 2021
The New Orleans Saints need help at tight end and Josh Pederson won’t solve their problems there.
The Saints lost Jared Cook and Josh Hill over the offseason and didn’t do much, if anything, to replace either of them. They clearly expected Adam Trautman to emerge as the TE1 after spending a third-round pick on him in last year’s draft and they also signed Nick Vannett, a journeyman at the tight end position, who to this point, hasn’t done anything in camp. In fact, he’s been pretty invisible.
Trautman is hopefully going to take the next leap in year two but if he doesn’t, the Saints will be in for a world of hurt when it comes to their tight end position. Pederson is a nice camp body to have and was likely signed due to Ethan Wolf’s injury
It was nice of the team to bring in a local kid to training camp and maybe Pederson will surprise us. The Saints definitely need to see something out of their tight ends though and there were still plenty of decent free agents who they could have brought in instead (Tyler Eifert, Trey Burton, Demetrius Harris, Geoff Swaim to name a few).
Next. 5 Takeaways from Day 8 of Camp. dark
Signing a tight end was something New Orleans needed to do but Josh Pederson probably won’t provide this team with much. Maybe he’ll surprise us though.