Saints fans have rejoiced at the team's aggressiveness in free agency. The New Orleans Saints were surprisingly one of the more active teams on the first day of free agency's legal tampering period. They agreed to terms with Travis Etienne, David Edwards, Ryan Wright and Noah Fant on Day 1 then followed it up with Kaden Elliss the next day. Cue the Georges St Pierre meme, Pro Football Focus' Gordon McGuinness is not impressed with this performance.
Big deals don't always correlate to good signings. We see teams who make splashes or dish out a lot of money and still find themselves near the bottom of the league. Though the Saints didn't spend a lot, McGuinness clearly doesn't the Saints free agency spending in the same light as Saints fans.
The writer gave the Saints an overall grade of a B. That's not bad at all, but it's also not the grade many fans would give the team. Most of them would put the Saints in the A range. Edwards and Etienne were players fans were clamoring for, and they both landed in New Orleans.
No love for the Saints free agents
McGuinness gave each team total grades and also graded each move individually. Neither system is too kind to the Saints. One thing worth mentioning is it doesn't necessarily feel as if there was much consistency in McGuinness' team grading system.
The Cowboys and Broncos were given very similar grades on their individual signings. The Broncos saw average grades across the board and finished with a C. The Cowboys had six signings highlighted, four of which were average, one good and the other above average. Somehow they still ended an entire letter grade below the Saints.
The inconsistency with the overall letter grades makes it difficult to value the cumulative opinion on the Saints free agency. The story is best told in terms of individual signings.
Despite fan excitement, the moves for Edwards and Etienne just don’t do it for McGuinness. While they may bolster a struggling run game, McGuinness sees both of those moves as average signings, same for Fant. The explanations speak more towards the player as an individual than how they fit the team needs.Â
McGuinness said Fant specifically doesn’t move the needle. He didn’t describe the other additions like that, but their grade suggests a similar opinion. McGuinness even went as far as saying the Saints "overcommitted" to Edwards.
The only move to receive a better than average grade was Kaden Elliss. McGuinness highlighted Elliss' back to back top-12 finishes in Wins Above Replacement among linebackers in the past two seasons. It's hard to argue with highlighting a stat directly connected to winning. Maybe that's why despite McGuinness highlighting each player's traits, Elliss was clearly more valuable than other players.