Another year, another new punter. The New Orleans Saints have waived Matthew Hayball. With his departure, the Saints will have a new starting punter for the fifth year in a row.
Hayball won the job in a competition with Lou Hedley in training camp last year. Hayball did a great job delivering coffin corner punts, but he left much to be desired as a field flipper. He found himself involved in another competition but didn't have the same good fortune.
The Saints recently picked up Kai Kroeger. He'll now be James Burnip's competition. Regardless of who wins the battle, the cycle of new faces at punter continues.
Maybe the Saints should have just kept Thomas Morstead
The Saints haven't found any consistency at the position over the last three seasons. In that timespan, Morstead has had an interesting trajectory.
Morstead has played for the New York Jets in three of the four three seasons since he left the Saints. He was traded from New York to the Atlanta Falcons in his first year with the Jets, but returned to the Big Apple in 2023. This is where he remained before joining the San Francisco 49ers this offseason.
The Saints have played hot potato at punter, and Thomas Morstead has bounced around to different homes. The parties seem to be in similar situations, but could this have been avoidable if the parties simply never divorced?
It's difficult to judge a punter purely off numbers. Where they are on the field determines a lot. If an offense typically stalls out around midfield, you may not get the best yards per punt. If the team is backed up in their own territory, you aren't going to put the ball inside the 20 often.
Despite bouncing around, Morstead has been pretty solid since leaving the Saints. In 2024, he had his second-best yards per punt of his career. In 2021 and 2022, Morstead put 40 percent of his punts inside the 20-yard line.
Morstead has done two things the Saints haven't been able to get from their punters in the last four years. He has been a Pro Bowl alternative and stayed with one team in back to back seasons. If the Saints felt Morstead was losing steam, signs point to the contrary. It was a gamble and one they haven't been able to deliver on.